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Vancouver Island newspaper ad helps reunite lost hearing aid with its owner, via Ontario

Community efforts enough to cement Edward and Vicki Demorest’s desire to move to Ladysmith
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Edward Demorest was reunited with his lost hearing aid (Submitted photo)

A wayward hearing aid has been reunited with its owner thanks to the efforts of the Ladysmith community.

Edward and Vicki Demorest have been in Ladysmith since January in search of a new home. The couple is from Kingston, Ontario, and decided to “test drive” the winter in Ladysmith to see how they liked it.

One day in early April, Edward had gone to the Ladysmith post office to get his mail. As a precaution against COVID-19, Demorest was wearing a face mask. When he took his face mask off outside the post office, the elastic band around the back of his ear knocked his hearing aid loose.

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“I didn’t realize it, but it went flying,” Demorest said. “My wife and I searched at great length. We came back two or three times, and thought we’d never see it again, but just this Monday I got a call from my tenant back in Ontario at my house saying someone had found my hearing aid.”

The hearing aid was found and turned in at Robson O’Connor LLP, where paralegal, Sandra Lynn decided to place an ad in the Ladysmith Chronicle saying a lost hearing aid had been found.

“I sit near the front of our office at 22 High Street. There was a man and a woman outside. I saw this gentleman bending over. So, I opened the door, I went outside, and he picked something out of the crack,” Lynn said.

That something was Demorest’s hearing aid.

Lynn placed a sign in the window, and phoned elderly clients to ask if they had lost a hearing aid. After failing to find the owner of the hearing aid, Lynn decided to place an ad in the Chronicle to help find the owner.

After the ad ran in the Chronicle, Gwen Burton, who previously worked for Connect Hearing in Ladysmith, contacted Lynn and traced the serial number of Demorest’s hearing aid back to his Ontario home.

“I figured most people wouldn’t know how to do that, or that you could do that,” Burton said.

In the case of lost hearing aids, Burton said the best thing to do is take the lost hearing aid to a local hearing clinic. Hearing clinics have the experience and the connections to quickly return lost hearing aids to their owners.

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Demorest was blown away by the discovery, and thankful to have his hearing aid returned.

“It’s been computerized and programmed for my particular hearing. So, it’s expensive to replace. It would have been around $1,000 to replace if I couldn’t find it,” Demorest said.

The whole experience has left a positive impression of Ladysmith on the couple. They have not found their dream home just yet, but they look forward to moving to Ladysmith permanently in the fall.

“It makes us want to come here more than we did already. We didn’t need much convincing. It just goes to show you that there’s a lot of nice people out there in the world, especially in the times we’re going through. They made my life so much easier,” Demorest said.

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