‘Press helped find my phone’

10:21am Monday 28th January 2008

A SINGLE mother today said she was "absolutely over the moon" after her son's mobile phone was returned following her appeal in The Press.

We told how Karen Ogden, 42, of Tang Hall, York, who is sometimes unable to speak after suffering from throat cancer, had bought the phone to communicate with her ten-year-old son, Beckam.

She bought the phone for Beckam - who has a severe behaviour problem and spends half his time living with her sister - so she could text him to find out where he was and what he was doing outside school time.

Miss Ogden, who is on morphine and is constantly tired, said she had also bought the phone so she could text Beckam if he was upstairs in her house and she wanted him downstairs.

She said this system of communication was a lifeline - but Beckam left his phone in a taxi last Friday.

Miss Ogden said she received a text message the following day saying the owner of the phone would get it back if they went to "the fountain in town" later that day.

She said her other son had waited at the fountain in Parliament Street, York, for two hours hoping to pick up the phone, but that nobody arrived with it.

She said she would not have been able to afford a replacement phone for Beckam.

But on Thursday, the police telephoned to tell her the phone had been handed in at Fulford Police Station.

She said she collected it yesterday and that it appeared to be in working order.

"Beckam and I were absolutely over the moon," she said. "I'm just really, really pleased. It's entirely thanks to the story in The Press that we've got the phone back."

After reading her appeal in The Press, a generous local retired electrician - who wished to remain anonymous - phoned us offering to give Miss Ogden money to buy a new phone.

"A really big thank you to the man who phoned up - that's lovely," she said.

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