A 21-month-old girl battling leukemia received a huge surprise from University of Pennsylvania Police after her iPad was stolen.
Arianna was given an iPad as a gift to help her stay in contact with family and friends while she stayed at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania.
Yesterday, while she was transferring rooms, Arianna’s mom, Katrina Knott, discovered that the iPad was gone.[[387471171, C]]
“I was panicking. I didn’t know what happened to it. We were just being transferred and my fiancé kept trying to calm me down saying ‘we will find it when we are packing’ but we didn’t. Then we came to the conclusion that it must have been taken,” Knott said.
The Find My iPad App eventually led Knott and her fiancé, Matthew Lewis, to UPenn's Campus.
“I waited until the next day to file a report with CHOP security and they said they would look into it. They told me to keep trying to find the iPad but it was off. Then, it finally turned on and the location showed up at UPenn's campus,” Knott said.[[387471681, C]]
The UPenn Officers, Ryan James and S. Cooper, helped Knott file another report.
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
“They said they would come back in an hour to fill out a new report,” Knott said.
An hour later, the UPenn officers showed up at Arianna’s room with an iPad.
“I was excited at first and I thought they had found it. But then we saw it and it didn’t look like hers. The Officers said we want you to have it and I started crying immediately. Arianna held the iPad and said ‘mine,’”Knot said.
The act of kindness not only brightened up Arianna’s day but helped restore Knott’s faith.[[387471541, C]]
“We have been through quite a lot and there are a lot of things that happen that test your faith and this just helped restore it,” Knott said.
Knott and her family are grateful to the UPenn officers and do not want Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania to be viewed negatively because of the incident.
“CHOP has been absolutely amazing and they have saved my daughter’s life on more than one occasion," Knott said. "The careless act of one individual should be a bad reflection of the whole. We just want the officers to get the recognition they deserve because they did something out of the kindness of their hearts that they really didn’t have to do."
