A group of Yellowknife moms came together to help foster mom Hannah Geissler after her stroller was stolen on July 24.
“Last summer… I was gifted a double chariot. It was in rough condition then, but it was a chariot and it was awesome. At the end of the summer, my kids and I love walking around the city. It’s a beautiful small spot,” said Geissler, who lives downtown. “The more we can get outside, the happier they are. It works out for all of us. So, to have this stroller gifted to me was amazing.”
She said she never bothered locking up the stroller due to its condition and proximity to her apartment building, where she stored it.
“Like I said, it was given to me and it was pretty banged up, but it did the job for us.”
Geissler was surprised to find her chariot was no longer in the area one morning.
“When my boys and I were on our way out of the house around 9:30 (a.m.), I kind of peeked down under our porch where I normally park it and didn’t see it there. I kind of looked up and down the alley behind my building and went, ‘Huh? I wonder where it is?’” she recalled. “At the time, we were on our way out the door. I didn’t really have a chance to stop and take a look.”
Geissler hoped that the stroller would be returned by the time she and her boys came back home, but it was still nowhere to be found.
“Five o’clock, we come back and it’s still not home,” she said. “At that point, I did do a quick Facebook post to the salvagers page and a couple of the mom-to-mom groups, knowing how helpful Yellowknife is, saying ‘Hey, if anyone happens to have seen my stroller, give me a shout. We love it, we’re looking for it. It’s be nice to have it back.’”
It did not take long for Geissler to get positive feedback on her post.
“Within three-and-a-half hours, I had multiple people sharing and commenting and posting on my post, saying, “Oh, a lot of people have seen it down at Black Knight, a lot of people have seen it walking with a certain individual.” So I was able to gather enough information to give the police a fairly comprehensive report when I reported it.”
Geissler was taken aback by the subsequent outpouring of kindness, and even more so when one of the moms offered to pick up a new chariot for her and her kids.
“It was the amazing,” she said. “It goes beyond words. The mom network here in Yellowknife really pulled together. I had three different people tag me in a post for a double chariot that was on the other side of town in the salvagers group. When I commented that I wouldn’t be able to pick it up because I couldn’t fit it in my vehicle (at) the same time as my kids, a mom, Sasha Shirley, actually offered to go pick it up for me and drop it off to my house.
“So within three-and-a-half hours of posting that my chariot was missing, I had a new chariot in my driveway — locked up this time — that’s actually in better condition than the one that went missing, which was really cool,” she said.
Any additional information about the missing chariot can be directed to the RCMP.