CORPUS CHRISTI, TX — Just by looking at her, you'd never know 9-year-old Jessi Spann uses a wheelchair to get around.
But Jessi suffers from several medical conditions.
Those conditions keep her tethered to a wheelchair. Or did; until this weekend when it was stolen from the bed of her mother’s truck.
“I loaded her up in the truck and I went to get the wheelchair out of the back whenever we got there and it was gone,” said Taylor Spann, Jessi’s mom.
Spann was out running errands when she noticed the chair was missing. Heart-broken she turned to Facebook in hopes someone might have seen it.
“She can’t be mobile around the house to play with her siblings, she can’t go out in the backyard with her siblings whenever we go bowling I mean she can’t be a part of the family without it,” said Spann.
John Gutierrez didn't see the wheelchair, but he did see her post, and acted immediately.
“I got a hold of a buddy of mine Freddy who owns a pharmacy,” said Gutierrez. “I kind of talked to him about it he said I’ll get you the wheelchair, see if we can get donations but I’ll help you out.”
Gutierrez’s boss who owns the Aztec Chevy dealership wrote a check for $5200 covering the total cost to replace jessies wheelchair.
But then donations started coming in, and everyone wanted to help.
“Within 5 hours $1000 Aztec Chevrolet, $1000 mickey Ochoa $1000 from an anonymous donor, $1000 New Life Church, myself $250 Ivey White $100 and Julio’s café right now is $500,” said Gutierrez.
Within a day he had good news to deliver to the Spann family.
“Seeing her mom carry that little girl into the dealership that day it hits you, you know, this is her life it’s her wheelchair,” said Gutierrez.
Now all that's left is to order the new chair for Jessi, which will take about two weeks, but according to Gutierrez, it'll be worth the wait.
“We own a body shop also and when the chair comes in we're going to take it all apart and she’s going to pick whatever she wants and we're going to put glitter onto her frame of the wheelchair,” said Gutierrez. “Then put it back together and deliver it to her.”
“And now she’s got my phone number and we talk every day,” said Gutierrez.
