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July 22, 2008
Hearing Aid Mistaken for Bluetooth Headset Stolen
A young boy and his mother were having lunch at a McDonalds when someone suddenly stole the boy's hearing aid.
Three-year-old Jose Franco still doesn't understand why his world went silent. He was born deaf and relies on a Cochlear implant to hear. Last week, while playing at a Los Angeles McDonalds, two teenage boys stole the external portion of the device called The Speech Processor.
"Suddenly someone came from behind and took his implant off his head," said Jose's mother Hilda Giron.
"Somebody mistook his cochlear implant for a bluetooth device, when they took it, he couldn't hear anything," Barbara Hecht with John Tracy Clinic.
Even with the $7,000 implant, it is a struggle for the three-year-old to communicate, but how the theft of his aid makes him feel, is crystal clear, "Sad."
"Time works against us, because each word he doesn't hear is a delay for him."
Replacing the stolen device, could take months, fortunately, the family has a backup device, but if anything happens to it, Jose will be cut off from the sound he's been trying hard to learn. "That device is worthless to the person who stole it, but it opens up the whole world to Jose," said Hecht.
This is the second time someone's tried to steal Jose's implant. The first time, his mother stopped the would-be thief and got the device back without any damage.
Advocates for the deaf worry as bluetooth headsets become more popular, these types of mistaken identity thefts will keep happening.
http://www.news8.net/news/stories/0708/536041.html
Posted by 4HL on July 22, 2008 12:04 AM
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