{"id":424073,"date":"2026-05-12T15:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/424073\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T15:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:23:14","slug":"paraplegic-woman-reunited-with-missing-wheelchair-after-unfortunate-mix-up-at-red-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/424073\/","title":{"rendered":"Paraplegic woman reunited with missing wheelchair after unfortunate mix-up at Red Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man\u2019s wife read the Herald\u2019s story on Cavanaugh\u2019s plight<\/a> in today\u2019s newspaper and immediately called the police. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe police contacted me and said that the wife of the guy that took it saw it in the newspaper this morning and realised that it hadn\u2019t been abandoned like he thought. And so she rang the police and the police contacted me,\u201d Cavanaugh said.<\/p>\n

Cavanaugh said the Triride was returned to her by police this afternoon in \u201cgood working order\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know what to feel because I\u2019d got used to the idea of what had happened and here it is,\u201d she said. \u201cNow I\u2019m feeling really happy to have it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DennyDenny Cavanaugh is “really happy” to have her Triride wheelchair back.<\/p>\n

Cavanaugh said police ruled out any foul play, with door cam footage from a nearby resident also appearing to confirm it had all been an unfortunate misunderstanding. <\/p>\n

\u201c[Police] don\u2019t think there was any bad intentions on their part. They gave me the number of the wife and the name of her husband and I rang her to thank her for calling the police. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe explained that her husband had seen it near an abandoned couch and thought that, and the footage confirms it, that he\u2019d looked it over and figured that the person who was using it would be sitting in it. It didn\u2019t occur to him that somebody might be using crutches because he just assumed it would be somebody who could only use the wheelchair. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe picked it up and he took it home thinking that he\u2019d keep it safe and take it from there … I think that he genuinely thought it had been abandoned and thought he was doing the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cavanaugh said her local community has been \u201creally supportive\u201d throughout her ordeal. She was thankful her story in the paper helped with the \u201cwonderful outcome\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt just makes my life so much easier. I guess I still feel a bit overwhelmed by it all really. It\u2019s fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man\u2019s wife read the Herald\u2019s story on Cavanaugh\u2019s plight in today\u2019s newspaper and immediately called the police.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,1975,51,7972,1558,22220,42,5836,6501,150845,43,1338,37967,116033,15406,12971,216921,312,5976,40,38,41,39,149003,34890,51975,102,1354],"class_list":["post-424073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-at","tag-auckland","tag-beach","tag-been","tag-going","tag-headlines","tag-lost","tag-missing","tag-mixup","tag-news","tag-paraplegic","tag-possession","tag-prized","tag-red","tag-returned","tag-reunited","tag-says","tag-short","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-unfortunate","tag-walk","tag-wheelchair","tag-with","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}