Oct. 30--A bionic arm that went missing -- thought to be stolen from a car while its 16-year-old owner was at a class -- has been found.
Samuel Luther was born without most of his left arm. While he has worn a prosthesis most of his life, it wasn't until last year that he got a bionic model that gave him more control.
The arm was apparently found in a Chicago Subway restaurant where the family had lunch on the day it went missing.
Subway manager Jamie Gordon said a staffer who was cleaning a bench in the corner of the restaurant found the arm more than a week ago. A Chicago police officer picked it up from the eatery, 1252 S. Halsted St., at about 8 a.m. Thursday.
"I thought it was a toy,'' Gordon said.
"Now that I know it's not a toy I feel better,'' said Gordon, who added she had not seen anything about the incident.
During a trip with his mother to Chicago earlier this month, the arm's battery died and the 16-year-old removed the prosthesis and placed it on the floor of the car, according to the boy's father. After returning home to North Aurora, the family discovered the arm was missing.
The family went back to Pilsen and started handing out fliers up and down the block, according to the boy's father, Derrick Luther. They didn't check the restaurant because the boy was adamant that he had it with him after the lunch break.
"That's our fault. We should have stopped in, but we didn't, we concentrated on the area around the modeling school."
The family filed a police report, and authorities said they were investigating.
"They could have said 'someone somewhere left this,' and it would have been in lost and found and we would have gotten it," Luther said. "Those detectives at the 12th District (police station) should get all the accolades."
Restaurant employee Shaquille Chandler, 22, spotted "fingertips" peeking out from between cushions of a couch where customers can sit and eat while cleaning up with another staffer after a busy lunch hour about a week and a half ago.
"We both thought it was a joke,'' Chandler said. "It's so close to Halloween and I'd never seen anything like it.''
He told his supervisor and put it in a safe place in case someone came back for it. It wasn't until Wednesday that he thought about it again after hearing the news story. "I highly doubted it was the arm they were talking about,'' Chandler said.
He learned Thursday through someone at work that it belonged to the boy.
The ordeal began Oct. 18 when Samuel and his mother came to Chicago for a photo shoot and a modeling class for the boy. The shoot was in Goose Island, and the two then went to Pilsen, stopping along the way at the restaurant.
"Two hours later they get back in, didn't think anything of it, but (Sam) doesn't remember it being down there," Luther said. "They get home, he goes one way, she goes another. We're looking around, 'Where's your arm, where's your arm?'
"Sam said it was in the car but it wasn't," Luther said. "His mother said, 'Maybe I brought it in.' But she didn't."
Their search took them to businesses near the photo shoot and to homeless spots under the Dan Ryan Expressway. The family thought maybe Samuel had kicked it out of the car or dropped it, but that seemed unlikely.
Samuel was born without the arm and has used prostheses most of his life. The bionic arm has articulating fingers and allows for better use of the hand than other prostheses.
Luther said the arm costs about $100,000, some of which the insurance company covered when it was purchased a year ago.
"He's used some mechanical ones in the past ... ones you push on and they open, ones that you push on and they close," Luther said. "When he was younger, it was pushed open so you can carry stuff around. They don't have those anymore.
The bionic model, he said, has "eight different programmable functions, and you can move the thumb manually with the other hand but you can put it into positions you want."
"It's a good thing I found it,'' said Chandler, the restaurant employee.
