Little girl’s ‘happiness’ disappears

Ce’Nedra Thorpe, 11, opened the front door Thursday morning to heartbreak.

Her black tricycle – “It meant happiness,” the wheelchair-bound girl with cerebral palsy simply said – was missing from her front porch.

The special-order adult-sized tricycle was the only way Ce’Nedra could exercise her weakened legs at home.

“Maybe someone will get a conscience and say, ‘Oops,’ and give it back,” said Jeannine Thorpe, Ce’Nedra’s mother. “It’s a real letdown for her to have someone take something so important to her.”

The three-foot-tall tricycle had special straps on the pedals to keep her feet in place and a white basket in the back. Jeannine Thorpe is asking for its return with no questions asked.

“That was the first real bike I ever had,” Ce’Nedra said quietly.

Surgeries in 2002 and 2003 left the girl with big brown eyes in chronic pain. Doctors broke Ce’Nedra’s femurs and fused together bones in her feet. The surgeries were meant to straighten her legs and allow her to walk, but they instead left the soon-to-be fifth-grader at Finch Elementary School with seven-inch scars on the sides of her thighs and four-inch scars on top of her thighs.

The tricycle was the only way Ce’Nedra could prevent her muscles from atrophy, outside of her weekly physical therapy.

“It was the best exercise she could get,” Thorpe said.

Thorpe is a single mother of four children, also including Mariah, 9; Jarod, 4; and Bryant, 3. Doctors diagnosed Mariah with a brain mass when she was 7 and performed surgery last year to drain the fluid from it. But the mass that’s wrapped around her pituitary gland can never be removed, leaving Mariah dependent on $1,500 shots every three months.

The state’s medical insurance has covered almost all the family’s expenses, but finances are still tight.

Thorpe brings home $1,100 a month, but rent for their two bedroom house eats up $600. She had saved up for the $340 bike since last Christmas and surprised Ce’Nedra with it for her birthday in March.

“To work so hard for something so important and it’s just gone,” she said, the frustration coming out in her voice. “And I can’t just go replace it. There’s no way.”

The children’s father watches them during the weekends while Thorpe works 16 hours a day as a certified nursing assistant at a retirement home. On weekdays, she watches the children as they play in the inflatable pool in the front yard and ride their bicycles together – until Ce’Nedra’s tricycle was stolen.

“On her bike she was just free,” Thorpe said. “She could be free and keep up with everyone for the first time in … “

“Eleven years,” Ce’Nedra interjected.

Anyone with information about the theft is asked to call Crime Check, at 456-2233.