Goodness always conquers badness, and the following is a kind tale about a young six year old boy touched to support us following the theft recently of a Bolton MRT collecting box from the Barber Shop, Radcliffe, which is owned by Team Support Group member Gary Melia.

The theft on Wednesday 26th March 2014 (not only of our collecting box but also a collecting box belonging to another charity) by a man posing as a customer was caught on CCTV, and despite our own release of the imagery on our website, Tweets, Facebook messages, You Tube, local press reports, enquiries by shop owner Gary Melia and Police enquiries the callous thief has yet to be apprehended. (Please see website ‘News’ report dated Friday 28th March 2014)

On Friday evening, 11th April, Support Group member and shop owner Gary Melia emailed our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE with the following kind and heart warming story

”Hi Garry, A bit of good news off me instead of the usual “my box has been nicked !” (Webmaster, this recent theft followed an earlier theft last year from Gary’s shop of another of our boxes, we believe from CCTV it is the same man !)

Today in my shop a lady came in with her children to get their hair cut, (These are regular customers of mine) When one of the children said he had £5… His mum went on to tell me that he’d seen the news of the theft of the Mountain Rescue charity box and was upset about it and that he wanted to give £5 out of his money box….. Absolutely brilliant. He’s only 6 years old !!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway I had some team stickers and team colouring sheets in my car from the recent supermarket collection, so I give him some of them.. he was made up ! The little boys name is Charlie Simmons-Davis and his mother is Hannah Simmons-Davis, I thought it would be nice if you could get him a mention on the website…

Hope we can do something with this as it made my day !

Regards, Gary Melia.”

This story has really touched the team membership, particularly from someone so young, and thoughtful, and has gone a large way to making up for the theft of our collecting box.