Student's Wheelchair Snatched

The bad luck began for Roel Saldivar '01 the day before he was scheduled to leave Houston for Orientation Week activities at Harvard.

Instead of spending his last night at home with family and friends, Saldivar was in surgery at a Houston hospital with a broken ankle.

Although he called officials at the College to request a wheelchair in addition to the crutches he had at home, the wheelchair that greeted Saldivar had a flat tire.

And that was just the beginning.

"I'd come from class to my dorm and I'd have to wait for someone to get my crutches from inside," Saldivar said.

Because his dormitory, Canaday D, is not wheelchair accessible, Saldivar began to park the wheelchair outside the dormitory while waiting for his roommates to bring his crutches from inside.

But there were times no one showed up.

"It became a question of timing," Saldivar said, recalling occasions spent waiting up to 30 minutes in the Canaday Common Room for someone to let him in.

Saldivar soon found a way to leave the crutches just outside the dormitory, so that he could exchange his wheelchair for the crutches and enter Canaday on his own.

But the plans all backfired Sunday morning.

Hoping to meet his older brother, Edgar Saldivar '99, for brunch at Leverett House, Saldivar emerged from Canaday to find that the wheelchair had vanished.

Although he had signed a form holding him accountable for potential damage to the wheelchair, Saldivar assumed the chair would be safe left unguarded, he said in an interview yesterday.

"I never figured I'd need a lock," he said.

After asking students in his entryway and proctor Mac Broderick about the missing wheelchair, Saldivar called Harvard University Police.

He filed a police report for the missing wheelchair, but the chair has yet to be found.

With Broderick's aid, Saldivar used crutches to get to his first class yesterday. After class, Broderick returned with wheelchair No. 3-a new wheelchair that the proctor obtained for Saldivar.

This time, the police gave Saldivar a chain lock to protect both wheelchair and crutches from future theft.

"Harvard's done everything that they can," Saldivar said. "My proctor and my entryway mates have helped. My only criticism is that the dorm is not wheelchair-accessible."