Two Surrey parents are speaking out after their 21-month-old daughter somehow disappeared from the child-minding area of a popular local gym.
Matt Hendrick said he left the toddler with staff at the Steve Nash Sports Club at Morgan Crossing on Monday night, but when he returned 45 minutes later, she was missing.
“My heart sank. It was just devastating,” he told CTV News. “You feel completely helpless.”
The panicked father ran around the gym and parking lot searching before he finally found her with a stranger at a nearby Starbucks.
The family said Hendrick was so distraught he missed the chance to ask the woman how she found his daughter.
The gym’s child-minding area is supposed to be monitored at all times, and it’s still unclear how the toddler got out. Steve Nash Fitness World spokeswoman Coleen Kirk said the incident is under investigation, but one employee has already been fired.
“We don’t know how the child exactly got out, but at the end of the day, the child got out,” Kirk said.
The company has strict protocols for releasing kids back to their parents, she added, and it will be working to determine what it can do to ensure nothing like this happens again.
“We’ve not had an incident like this before in our club,” she said.
There is security footage that should help shed light on what happened, but it hasn’t been reviewed yet.
Hendrick and his wife said they felt obligated to share their experience to ensure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“What happened was horrific and that’s the best thing that could have happened out of that scenario,” Hendrick said. “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, ever.”
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Scott Hurst
