Community Comes Together to Find Man’s Wheelchair Stolen at BSU Game; GoFundMe Page Launches
Everything that's happened in the news in the last 48 hours has been really overwhelming. Everyone's angry. Everyone's taking sides on Facebook. Sometimes, you just want to hear some good news, right?
Well, here's a story that will restore your faith in humanity. Over the weekend, Jeff Connell shared a man named Nathan Ogden's devastating story from Friday night's Boise State vs Virginia game. Ogden depends on his custom wheelchair to get around and had it with him on Friday night. He and his wife had seats in Section 8, so he left his chair at the top of the section and had his wife help him down the stairs. When they went back up to retrieve the chair at half time it had been stolen.
The ironic part? Ogden is the same man who made local headlines by using an adaptive bicycle to travel from Bend, OR to California as a fundraiser or an organization that helps provide wheelchairs to those in need in underdeveloped countries.
Well, last night close to 200 people from all over the Treasure Valley got together at Albertsons Stadium to search the stands, tailgate lot, trees lining the Greenbelt and dumpsters on the BSU campus. Unfortunately, the search came up empty.
Ogden calls his wheelchair his "legs" and the community wants to do whatever they can to get him a replacement for his chair. A GoFundMe Page named "Nathan's New Chair" was set up to replace his $4,500 custom wheelchair. In 18 hours, more than four times that number was raised thanks to a $20,000 donation from BodyBuilding.com founder, Ryan Deluca.
The creators of the campaign plan to donated the extra funds to "Chair the Hope," the organization that Ogden raised money for during his bike ride from Oregon to California.