5-Year-Old MDA Goodwill Ambassador's Family Car Stolen

A 5-year-old girl has helped raise awareness and money for MDA, but now a crime has her family wondering how they'll get her to doctor appointments for her own life-altering disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

Thursday, March 31st 2011, 7:21 pm

By: News 9


Darren Brown, News9.com

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A 5-year-old girl has helped raise awareness and money for MDA, but now a crime has her family wondering how they'll get her to doctor appointments for her own life-altering disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

Teresa Johnson's daily routine was severely disrupted Wednesday, but she almost didn't notice it at all. She took her oldest daughter to school using her mother's vehicle and came back home as usual. It was only when she went to pick her daughter up that afternoon that she noticed something was missing.

"And lo and behold, my car is gone. And come to find out, it had been missing all day," Johnson said. "I didn't know to look for my car to be missing. I wouldn't expect it to be missing."

But it may have been easy for her to miss. Johnson's daughter Bri is the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Goodwill Ambassador and needs her electric wheelchair to be a kid.

Johnson's Honda was 15 years old, so she only had liability insurance on it.

"You know, it happens every day to a lot of people all the time, but when it happens to you, it's the same old thing, like "Why me? Why does this have to happen to me? Why now?" Johnson said. "I had a hard enough time transporting her in my car having to use the manual chair because I didn't have anything bigger. Now I don't have anything at all."

Johnson said she's trying to use her mother's car when it's available, without being a burden, but she knows it's not a permanent fix.

Johnson said car or no car, it probably won't stop her daughter Bri from helping to raise money for MDA. Just this past weekend, her Muscle Walk team, Bri's Bunch, collected over $3,700 in pledges.

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