UPDATE: 4:10 p.m.  Lewiston Police found Dana Huard’s stolen wheelchair an will be returning it to him. It is in working order, according to Huard’s daughter Wendy Demar.

LEWISTON — When Rumford’s Tom Fallon read Thursday’s Sun Journal story about a Lewiston man who had his electric wheelchair stolen from his porch he knew he could help.

Fallon stepped forward Thursday to donate an slightly used electric wheelchair that is similar to the one that was stolen from 80-year-old Dana Huard last weekend.

Fallon was among several people who called the Sun Journal and offered to help. Several in the newspaper’s web site online community also offered to help  by starting a collection for Huard.

Fallon said the wheelchair he has belonged to his late wife Jackie Fallon, who died in February.

“It’s what she would have wanted to do,” Fallon wrote in an email message to the Sun Journal. “She was generous to a fault, if generosity can be characterized as a fault.” 

Huard’s daughter Wendy Demar said her dad would be in the hospital a few more days and that she and her husband were planning to drive to Rumford Saturday to check out the wheelchair Fallon had and bring it back if it looked like it would work for him.

“It’s just wonderful,” Demar said of Fallon’s offer. “I spoke with him on the phone to arrange it and he sounds like a very nice man.”

Fallon wrote Jackie was a religious person,  and while he had planned to put the wheelchair up for sale in Uncle Henry’s — a statewide classified ads booklet — he decided his wife would have wanted him to donate it to somebody in need.

His donation was a way to give back for the support he and Jackie received, Fallon wrote.  

“We have benefited from the generosity of many people during the last few years of her life,” he wrote.

Contact information for several others who offered to donate a scooter for Huard were passed on to Demar.

She said she would contact all those who had offered to help and was amazed and grateful for the response.

sthistle@sunjournal.com