A Roleystone man who depends on cycling to treat his Parkinson’s disease has had his bike stolen at the Armadale Centrelink office earlier this month.
Phillip Everett, 55, has had Parkinson’s for 12 years and is on a disability pension.
On August 3 around noon he rode to the Centrelink office on William Street to drop off some forms and left his $2200 bright blue racing bike in the airlock.
Moments later someone leaving the Centrelink office grabbed the bike and rode it down the road toward Armadale station.
Mr Everett said it happened quickly.
“I attend the office quite regularly, I only had to drop in for a brief moment to hand a form in and I put my bike in the airlock area where I normally leave it,” he said.
“Normally I’d slip the chain around the wheel but on this case I didn’t because I was only going to be there for a few minutes.
“Sure enough within three minutes someone decided to steal the bike and bolt out of the office with bike in tow.”
He is devastated because the bike is so important to his therapy.
“The reason why I ride my bike is because it’s my only means of transport, I don’t drive,” he said.
“The second thing about cycling is in the case of Parkinson’s disease you must remain very vigilant about your exercise.
“On a push bike you have to pedal the full stroke to ride a bike where as with Parkinson’s disease you get what you call festination where you start taking shuffling steps.
“This helps counteract that, it allows you to remap your brain in terms of maintaining a good posture and being able to walk around.”
He urged anyone who has seen his bike, a bright blue Giant racing bike, to contact the police.
Armadale officer in charge Senior Sergeant Glenn Spencer said the investigation was ongoing and they were waiting to view Centrelink’s CCTV footage and to speak to the security guard who chased the offender.
He said because Centrelink was a federal agency information sharing was more difficult.
“The sticking point is because they’re a federal agency and we’re a state agency we don’t have the same information sharing agreements as we do with other state agencies like health and the like,” he said.
“It can be frustrating but there are reasons for those protections to be in place.
“We’ll get a statement off the security guard, we’ll review the footage, we’ll probably use some social media to try and identify any POIs.”
Call police on 131 444 or anonymously at Crimestoppers 1800 333 000.
