A vehicle belonging to a Calgary couple set to be married was stolen, which contained a wheelchair belonging to the groom and a wedding dress, weeks before their ceremony.
The last location Alexis Solberg says she left her Jeep Grand Cherokee at the Bianca Amor’s Liquidation store parking lot in Canyon Meadows in southwest Calgary before it was stolen.
“I was probably in the store for 15 minutes, came out, and my vehicle was gone,” she tells CityNews while in her living room.
But this is no ordinary car theft, as inside the vehicle was her fiancée, Jeremy Van Deventer’s wheelchair — which he relies on due to ALS — and Solberg’s wedding dress.
“It’s very frustrating.. Seems like nothing is going our way,” Van Deventer explains as he sits next to Solberg and his daughter Eveleigh.
He was diagnosed with ALS about six months ago, saying, “Every day is a different challenge for me.”
This past Christmas, he asked Solberg to marry him.
“Just like a penguin finds its soulmate and spends the rest of its lives together, will you marry me?” Solberg says, reading his proposal in a video posted to social media. “Oh baby, don’t cry, love you’re going to make me cry.”
The family says the toughest part of the whole situation is that Van Deventer is now stuck inside. He recently got a motorized wheelchair; however, it’s not very effective in the snow.
“When he gets to go out, and we get to spend time with Eveleigh too, doing things together as a family, it’s just, now we kind of don’t have that. Well, also, it’s difficult,” Solberg said. “That gets me to my appointments, too.”
They add that the situation is even more difficult because they traded in their two vehicles for an SUV after the diagnosis, so they could accommodate the three of them and a wheelchair.
Meanwhile, the support they’ve received from the Calgary community has been very heartwarming, with many people reaching out to Solberg, offering to let her borrow their wedding dress. Unfortunately, she says it’s not quite the same.
“I would like to have a dress that I can keep forever, and Everleigh can have it when she’s older and do what she likes with it, so then she has that memory of her dad as well,” she said.
The wedding is taking place on March 14, and the family says they’re going to enjoy it with or without their missing items.
They have a GoFundMe set up for anyone who wants to help out.