Taking a theft to heart

The folks at Leisure Estates were prepared for nearly everything except one of the quirks of human nature.

Someone stole their defibrillator. It doesn't make any sense, but that's people.

Leisure Estates is a Renton mobile-home park for people 55 years and older. Many of the residents of its 250 homes are in their 70s and 80s.

The residents are an active and close-knit community and they are keen on being prepared for any disaster.

Bert and Evy Nord are the point people for preparedness.

They said the community has medical supplies, cots, stretchers and whatever else they figure to need in an emergency.

And from time to time, someone's heart needs a little attention. So three years ago, they added the defibrillator, which can shock a chaotic heart back to normalcy.

Bert said medics are close and always get to the park quickly when they are needed, but residents worried about a disaster that would prevent help from getting to them.

It took them a year of garage sales, pancake breakfasts and other fundraisers to collect $2,100 for the device.

They bought a Medtronic Lifepak in 2004 and they'd just installed a new $125 battery when it was taken.

"I don't understand why people have to be so petty that they'd steal something like that that's of no value to them," Bert told me.

He and Evy live in a manufactured home across the road from the mailboxes. The defibrillator was kept in a box on a wall of the mailbox shelter.

It wasn't locked. That would defeat the purpose.

The Nords figure it was probably mischief.

It's not what their community is used to. The place is quiet and orderly. The yards and homes are neat and clean. People know each other.

The Nords moved to Leisure Estates in 1978 not long after the park opened.

They are old Renton. New Renton is rising all around them — condos, houses, businesses.

When I drove up Northeast Fourth Street on the way to the park, the hillside gave way to an expanse that looked like a choppy lake on a gray day.

But the waves were rooftops, lots of them, flowing off to the east.

While we talked, TV newscasters were showing what a Renton Sonics arena might look like.

Bert, who was born in Renton, said when he graduated from high school in 1941 he knew everyone he met on the street. He worked 30 years for Overall Laundry Services in Seattle.

They moved to Leisure Estates because it was nicely planned and close to freeways.

The name feels like what retirement was supposed to be.

Another era still lives inside the gates. But no place or time is safe from bad behavior.

The stolen device is less than a foot tall and a foot wide; easy to carry off, but not so easy to replace. Residents hope whoever took the defibrillator will be moved to bring it back.

This is a chance for someone to restart his own heart.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday.

Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.