Rosalinda Gerardo loaded up her SUV in her San Martin driveway on Oct. 25 and went inside her house to get her twin 9-year-old girls and her 5-year-old daughter to bring them to school.
When she came back outside, the black Chevy Suburban was gone.
“I just stood there looking and went, ‘Oh my gosh, what is going on?’” she said. “I thought maybe my husband took it to get gas, but when I called him, he didn’t have it. He walked to work. If it wasn’t happening to me, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Her vehicle was stolen, but it gets worse. The car was specially fitted for her daughter, Jocelyn, who has a rare, painful and debilitating condition in which her flesh calcifies to bone and she can’t function without a wheelchair, glasses, hearing aids and a computer that lets her communicate.
It was all in the Suburban.
“It was horrible,” she said. I’m just thankful my kids weren’t in the car.”
Gerardo reported it to police and took to social media hoping someone could help. Four days later, Gilroy Police came through.
An officer spotted the car on Leavesley Road and took off after it. It turned onto Luchessa Avenue where two people jumped out. The driver fled onto Highway 101 and drove off the road, through a fence on ranchland. Officers followed and the Suburban rammed a police car, injuring the officer when the airbag deployed.
Police finally surrounded and arrested the suspect, a woman named Valeria Olmos, 22. They also grabbed the two who had jumped out, Izaak Diaz, 23, and an underage girl.
They were charged with stealing the car, assault, resisting arrest and violation of probation.
What followed was some good news and some bad. The car was totaled, but insurance would cover it.
Corporal Lamont Toney found the purple and black wheelchair being towed behind a bicycle by a homeless man. The man told him he got the chair in a dumpster at a homeless camp by Alexander and Eighth streets. But, said Gerardo, it was so badly damaged it couldn’t be used. Searching Olmos’s home, police said they found the $5,000 communication device, but not Jocelyn’s glasses or her specially made $7,000 hearing aids, which were in her backpack.
The wheelchair will take months to replace. They have improvised one that allows her to go to school at Blackford in San Jose, but Jocelyn is is in so much pain, she needs her wheelchair’s special padding and design to be able to function.
“My daughter can’t sit up or speak,” said Gerardo, who works in San Jose as a mental health caseworker. Her husband is a concrete contractor. “She’s a really fragile child. Imagine you are stuck in a chair and you can’t get up and move around. It’s heartbreaking.”
The computer Jocelyn uses with her feet to communicate was OK, but they broke the mount and arm so she can’t use it.
“I can’t believe these people had no compassion. You would think they would have a little bit of humanity and see that the car had a wheelchair and toss it out without destroying it.”
However, she found some humanity from the Gilroy Police Officers Association, which contributed $1,000 to help offset expenses. She thanked them Sunday, letting them meet her family at police headquarters.
“This is why we do our job,” said Gilroy Sgt. Robert Locke-Padden. “To help people like this. We have to see so much and do so much. Sometimes we’re dealing with negative situations where people are getting arrested. It’s really heartwarming where we can do something and see something positive, get something back that was taken from them. It helps to fill your soul. That stuff is really important for police officers.”
Gerardo said the officers really made a difference.
“They went above and beyond and really worked their butts off. I think more people should give them credit.”
