‘It’s not right to take my phone’

Derek Bernath is mentally challenged. Though he’s 36, he comes across as far younger. Innocent. What happened to him two weeks ago at the condominium complex where he lives makes your blood boil.

“I thought those boys playing Marco Polo with me in the pool were nice,” Derek told me after his iPhone 6 Plus was stolen. “I wanted them to be my friends. But they were mean. It’s not right to take my phone.”

Whenever this happens — people taking advantage of their son — Wayne and Peggy Bernath get sick to their stomachs.

“Most people are nice,” said Wayne Bernath, a semiretired publicist who contacted me after his son’s phone was stolen. “But some people find ways to get things from him.”

That Derek was victimized upset Michael Gaughan, the South Point owner who hired Derek as a part-time porter two years ago. He hated to hear that “the young man who thinks everybody is his friend” has to experience people who see him as someone to be fleeced.

“He’s pretty safe working here,” Gaughan said. “He does his job. Everybody looks out for him. We look out for our employees with challenges. It’s sad, but they have to learn a stranger can be danger. Everybody’s not your friend.”

On March 15, Derek learned again that everybody is not his friend.

That afternoon, before he went in the pool at the condos near South Point, he placed his phone on a table and draped it with a towel. He and two teenagers, who got in and out of the pool at different times, were the only ones there.

When Derek decided to leave, his phone was gone. The two teens said they’d help him look for it. When it wasn’t found, they said somebody must have reached through the fence and taken it.

After Derek used another phone PHONE,