A Claremont family is asking the public to help replace their disabled son’s specialty beach wheelchair, stolen last week while he attended a Long Beach sports camp for people with disabilities.

It was the first time 26-year-old Patrick Freeman could attend the camp after an accident three years ago left him in a coma.

His parents, Mike and Cheri Freeman, lived in Colorado when they received the call that every parent dreads: Their son suffered a severe brain injury after a driver ran a red light and hit him while crossing the street.

“His life and our lives were ruined in an instant,” Mike said, adding that the couple hopped on a plane to California that night and have been here ever since.

Patrick was attending Santa Monica College at the time of the accident. When he emerged from the coma several months later he still could not walk, talk or even eat on his own.

Mike and Cheri became his primary caretakers. It hasn’t been easy.

Wheelchair provided beach access

After seeing slow but steady progress, Mike said they spent $1,700 a couple months ago on a lightweight wheelchair that maneuvers easily across the sand and doubles as a flotation device, allowing Patrick to float in a pool and go right into the ocean.

“Patrick always loved the beach; it’s one of the things that drew him out to California,” Mike said. “So this is a way for him and his mother to find some joy out of a ridiculously sad experience.”

The family had just finished day one of the Land Meets Sea Sports Camp, an annual three-day camp hosted by Casa Colina that offers adaptive land and water sports for children and adults with disabilities.

Priti Vaidya, director of Casa Colina’s outdoor adventures program, said Patrick was “smiling ear to ear” while he played wheelchair tennis and took a cruise around the harbor.

Then things went terribly wrong.

Theft of trailer

The family had just sat down for a nice dinner at a local Italian restaurant when Patrick began having seizures, and the Freemans had to rush to a nearby hospital. On the way, the seizures got so bad they had to pull over and call an ambulance to take him the rest of the way.

“We realized he couldn’t continue with the second and third day of the sports camp,” he said.

When they returned to their hotel in Seal Beach about 11 p.m. Aug. 3, Mike said he was sure he saw the 5-by-10-foot trailer that houses Patrick’s wheelchair in the parking lot.

“But when I went out the next morning to hook up the trailer and go home, it was gone,” he continued.

The Freemans reported the theft to Seal Beach police, who have not had any luck locating the stolen trailer, police said.

While they are sad about the loss of a special piece of equipment, the family also sees a silver lining in all of this — highlighting the need for better quality beach-access wheelchairs at Southern California beaches.

“There are a lot of people out here that would like to go to the beach but they can’t because they don’t have the right equipment,” Mike said.

Sheila Stevenson, a family friend, set up a YouCaring page to help raise $20,000 to replace Patrick’s chair and purchase 10 new beach-access wheelchairs to be donated to beaches in the Los Angeles area.

“Patrick is doing well and that’s really good so now that he is getting his recovery going, let’s focus on seeing if we can help some other people,” Mike said.