HOLLADAY, Utah — A local Catholic church in Holladay is asking for the public’s help after all their assisted listening devices were stolen, leaving hard-of-hearing parishioners unable to follow services.
"They’re struggling to hear, and it’s just sad that someone would take them and they have no value to anybody," said parish secretary Ildiko Haycock.
When parishioners at Saint Vincent de Paul come to take in the word of God, it’s made a lot harder when they can’t hear it.
"It left us, and a lot of the people who rely on those devices to listen to mass, kind of in a bad spot," explained Deacon Jeff Allen, who also chairs the Diocesan Commission for People with Disabilities.
Reading from the book of Job doesn’t have the same impact when parishioners can’t hear it.
"When the church gets full, you’re not guaranteed a spot up close by the speakers, and so they rely on these devices that go directly into an earpiece that we have, or they can bring their own so they can hear directly from the microphone, to listen to the word of God, and the preaching of the day," said Allen.
The deacon said the church has a special mass for the deaf community in sign language but the listening devices are mainly for the hard-of-hearing or their aging parishioners, and this past weekend they had to go without.
According to Haycock, who works in the church's front office, the devices were stolen sometime the weekend before last, disappointing many in the congregation who came this weekend for mass.
"It allows them to hear the homily and the gospel, and that’s why they come, she said.
The assisted listening devices don't work without the transmitter, so it's believed the thief or thieves don’t realize what they’ve stolen because they didn’t take the headsets that are needed to make them work.
"I’m hoping maybe somebody will see this, I also thought maybe they’ll see they’re worthless and just dump them somewhere and somebody stumbles across them and goes what is this? And maybe if they saw something on the news they could return them," said Allen.
The commission which the deacon chairs originally provided the receivers that are now all gone.
"[The thieves are] not going to hear anything through them," he added, "it’s not going to be any good to them. It’s not like a radio or something. It only works with our system."
Parishioners were asked this weekend to pray for the return of the devices or it will cost the parish hundreds of dollars they’d rather use elsewhere.
"They didn’t get what they were hoping for," the deacon said. "We’re hoping they return them or dump them and somebody picks them up.
"We’d love to have them returned."
