Created: 6/17/2009 3:19:19 PM 
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- An act of cruelty on the Westside has an elderly woman in a tough spot. Tuesday afternoon, someone stole the golf cart she uses to get around.
Mary Romeo is a senior citizen with advanced osteoporosis. Every shuffled step is another shot of pain in her hunched-over back.
Especially on the 300-foot trek to her mailbox over a bumpy, rutted road.
"I have my walkers, and they help a great deal," said Romeo. "It's real hard for me to get to the mailbox walking, so I take my golf cart."
But Romeo is talking about the way things USED to be, when she had an old golf cart...until Tuesday afternoon.
"I had my cart at the front gate being charged. And I walked out, and I thought, 'Oh my God! My cart's gone!'"
After many tears, the disbelief is still there.
"I just can't believe somebody took it!" she cried.
And now just getting the mail or taking out the trash is a painful journey.
"It's a day's work!" she exclaimed.
"If I go down in the back to see my niece, I can't walk that far. I can, but it's very, very painful."
And without her four-wheeled friend, Romeo knows she is resigned to a new reality.
"I guess I won't get around near as good," she said.
Romeo is hoping and praying the golf cart thief might have a change of heart and bring it back. JSO took a theft report, but Romeo knows the odds are against getting her golf cart back.
"To them it wouldn't mean that much, but to me it's a necessity."
"God I'm going to miss it, and I don't think they're (JSO) going to find it!"
