3-wheeled cycle stolen from disabled teenager

It takes a special kind of thief to steal a three-wheeled cycle from a developmentally disabled girl.

Allis and Rex Rickey returned home Thursday evening with their foster daughter, Alyssa, to find her beloved red Schwinn with the chrome fenders and oversized black seat missing.

Someone had taken it from their carport on North Wiscomb Street where the three-wheeler had been chained.

Allis Rickey said it could have been taken anytime between Wednesday and Thursday evening. She’s not sure of the exact time because the family has been running back and forth to the hospital to visit one of their adult children.

Alyssa is a 17-year-old special education student who can neither read nor write.

“She came to us as a baby, and we cared for her all these years,” Allis Ritchey said.

If there was one thing that gave her joy in life it was riding her red Schwinn up and down the family’s driveway, her mother said, so she took the theft pretty hard.

“She was devastated,” Rickey said. “She loves to go out and ride it. Eventually she may need to ride it to work. It will be her only means of transportation.”

She speculates that the thief must have seen her daughter riding the three-wheeler in the driveway, because it could not have been seen from the street.

“It just makes me sick,” Rickey said. “It’s like stealing a wheelchair.”

The Rickeys cling to hope that Alyssa’s Schwinn will turn up. Anyone with information about Alyssa’s three-wheeler is urged to call the police tips line (509) 242-TIPS.