DOVER — Exactly what sort of person would steal a van with a wheelchair and a special stroller inside while a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy is at a holiday dinner with her mother?

That’s what Dover police are trying to find out. Isabelle Soto and her mother, Virginia Caro, were at a relative’s house for dinner Thursday, when Caro went outside to warm up the van before they left. When she brought Isabelle outside, the van was gone.

Now Caro, a single mother, has no way to get her seriously disabled daughter to her doctors’ appointments and without the wheelchair and stroller, she must carry her from place to place.

"Who does something like this two days before Christmas?" Caro said today. "This puts such a big damper on her life."

It wasn’t as if it were a flame-red Ferrari. But evidently someone still thought Caro’s donated, slightly dented 1997 Pontiac Trans Sport, with young Isabelle Soto’s photo dangling on a handicapped tag from the rear-view mirror, was worth taking.

Dover police are have not yet located the van, Capt. Peter Ugalde said today. Whoever took it probably quickly realized it was used by a handicapped person, he said, but that didn’t seem to make a difference.

"You’d think they would have pulled over and left it there and gone on to bigger and better things," Ugalde said. "But for whatever reason, they decided to keep it. There are nefarious people who would take something just to get two or three blocks ahead."

Caro had left the motor running around 7:45 p.m., after a Christmas dinner on Myrtle Avenue in Dover. She’d wanted to heat the van for Isabelle, who has poor circulation, before driving back to their Budd Lake home. But in the time it took to retrieve her daughter from the house, the thief had struck.

Gone with their van were the Christmas presents inside, along with Isabelle’s only wheelchair — which she’d relied on since the right side of her brain was removed in March, paralyzing the left side of her body.

In the past two years, the young girl has had nine operations, and she is scheduled for hip surgery on Jan. 19 that will confine her temporarily to a body cast.

In June, the Make a Wish Foundation, which aids children with life-threatening illnesses, sent Isabelle to Disney World in Florida.

Caro, who cares for her daughter full-time, lives on Social Security and child support. Stolen in the van were the mother and daughter’s Social Security cards and food stamps. As they were driven home from the police station, Caro wondered how she’d get Isabelle to therapy and all of her other appointments.

"I’m a mess crying and she’s singing in the back, clueless, so happy," Caro said. "And I just thought well, thank God she doesn’t understand."

Caro hopes someone will spot the charcoal-gray van’s license plate, ZZC15G, and call Dover police at (973) 366-0302, or that whoever swiped it will find a better ride.

"I just really want to tell this person, it’s her wheelchair — it’s not a luxury item, it’s a necessity. Just park the van where somebody can find it, and we can get it back," Caro said. "That’s all we really want."