The pickleball club in Kelowna has been hit hard by a recent theft.
“It was devastating,” said Carly Penfold, Pickleball Kelowna Club’s executive officer.
Sometime between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, the club’s storage bin at the back of the Parkinson Centre was broken into.
The volunteer-driven club lost thousands of dollars in maintenance equipment, including three leaf blowers.
However, it’s the theft of one item that has really thrown the club a curveball, an automated external defibrillator (AED) used in the event of a cardiac arrest emergency.
“It was just really hurtful,” Penfold said. “We’ve really done a lot of fundraising with our tournaments to get this equipment.”
It’s a life-saving device that’s now gone, just ahead of the club’s annual Kelowna Fall Frenzy tournament set for this weekend.
“Right when we need the AED the most,” Penfold said.
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For club member Craig McMillan, the theft of the AED is especially upsetting.
“Extremely disappointing,” McMillan told Global News.
McMillan used that exact defibrillator to save a friend’s life during the same tournament two years ago when the player suddenly collapsed.
“I was able to start literally within seconds of him going down,” McMillan said.
McMillan’s life-saving efforts were recognized by B.C. Emergency Health Services just last week.
The club has reported the incident to police.
In an email, Kelowna RCMP stated they are asking for anyone with information on the thefts to contact them.
The club is urging whoever took the AED to return it by leaving it at the storage bin or police station.
“Drop it off here in the middle of the night. No questions asked,” McMillan said. “I can’t imagine the person, if they had any conscience at all, would have to live with that, that someone could go down, we would have had a piece of equipment that could have helped save their life, and it wasn’t available because someone took it.”
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