At first, Kris Diel thought that one of her kids had left the garage door of her Hugo house wide open overnight. Then she looked inside Thursday morning to discover that hanging tool boxes had been emptied, and her truck with her teenage daughter's customized wheelchair loaded in back was stolen.

"It wasn't just a wheelchair, it was a personal thing of hers," said Diel, a widowed mother of three. "She picked it out, helped design it, and picked the colors."

Diel's 13-year-old daughter, Amber, has spina bifida and the TiLite 2GX Swing Away wheelchair is her lifeline. Without the chair, which is valued at $5,700, Amber is housebound and can't get to appointments such as Thursday's therapy session to help her relearn how to walk after four surgeries in the past two months.

Amber burst into tears when her mother told her that her pink chair with black cushions and light gray wheels was gone.

Sometime after the Diels went to bed at 10 p.m. Wednesday, somebody entered their closed but unlocked front door on the 13800 block of Geneva Avenue N.

While Diel, her daughter and two sons slept, the crooks grabbed the keys to her red 2004 4-door extended cab Chevy Avalanche from inside the house, went into the garage and loaded thousands of dollars of her late husband's tools. Then she surmises that the crook manually opened the garage door, let the truck roll down the driveway before starting it up, and drove away.

"I was robbed," said Diel, whose husband died five years ago. "I cried and was angry. They didn't just take my things, but my daughter's."

Diel asked neighbors if they had seen anybody or noticed anything suspicious, but none had. On Thursday afternoon, authorities had no suspects in custody and no leads.

"We'd really like to find this car," said Cmdr. Cheri Dexter of the Washington County Sheriff's Office.

The truck's Minnesota license plate is MZT 136. It also has a 4-inch by 4-inch sticker sporting the letters EBC in the back window, she said.

The theft came after a difficult month, physically and emotionally, in which Amber underwent four surgeries related to her spina bifida. In early July, she had a procedure for bladder control. In early July, she had a shunt installed, but two weeks later it failed and she had to have it redone. Further complications arose, and she went back on Aug. 1 for a third time.

Amber has recovered from her surgeries, but without her wheelchair she has been crawling on her knees to get around.

"That is my granddaughter's life line," said her grandmother Diane DePover of Inver Grove Heights. "The girl has been to hell and back. Isn't that enough? They didn't just take away her quality of life, they took away her whole life."

Diel said she hopes the thief has some remorse and returns her daughter's chair. In the meantime, she said she can't afford to buy a new one. She will try to find a suitable replacement, perhaps at a garage sale, so Amber can return to Central Junior High in White Bear Lake where she starts eighth grade next month.

On top of Thursday's ordeal, Diel discovered that her freezer died. She was forced to throw away its contents.

"That's the last thing you need," she said.

Anybody with information is asked to call the Washington County Sheriff's Office at 651-439-9381.

Tim Harlow • 612-673-7768