Cranberry Township family shaken by note left on car
Caterina Potts, of Cranberry Township, is already raising a child with cerebral palsy.
So she was particularly shocked Tuesday, Aug. 18 when, after returning from shopping at a HomeGoods store in Cranberry Township, she said she discovered an unidentified person had left a note on her car’s windshield accusing her family of inappropriately parking in a Americans with Disabilities Act compliant space.
The note read, “Follow the rules, you’r (sic) not hannicapp (sic), just lazy, walking will help you. Ticket soon/mail.”
“It was pretty overwhelming to experience that,” Potts said.
That day, Potts said she was out shopping with her husband, Jacob, 7-year-old son, Callen, and the couple’s two other children.
Callen was born through an emergency procedure in Jacksonville, Fla., causing a form of cerebral palsy. It has left him a quadriplegic.
Although Callen normally requires a wheelchair to move around, Jacob physically carried Callen through the HomeGoods’ parking lot and placed him into a shopping cart.
“We always leave the wheelchair in the vehicle if we’re going into a store that’s crowded with lots of things that are breakable. HomeGoods would be one of those stores,” Potts said. “He’s a 7-year-old boy. He’s going to touch things. Things are going to break. So, to contain the chaos, we’ll put him in the cart and watch the other children.”
Because of her son’s condition, the family has an ADA parking placard for their car.
“Not all placards go to the specific person who is disabled. It’s for their caretakers as well,” Potts said. “We were allotted the placard for safety for him.”
The family did not notice the note on their car’s windshield until after they returned from the store. After she read it, Potts said she was disturbed.
“The fact that someone watched us leave the vehicle and had enough energy to leave the note and put it on top of my vehicle, with my handicapped placard visible, really got to me because they should have just confronted me,” Potts said. “If you think I'm doing something wrong, let me tell you why I’m not.”
After she found the note, Potts made numerous attempts to find the writer, which were unsuccessful.
“There was a woman parked beside me in a handicapped spot with her vehicle on,” Potts said. “I knocked on her window and I asked her, ‘Excuse me, did you see someone leave a note on my windshield? Or did you possibly leave a note on my windshield?’ She said, ‘No, absolutely not.’”
She also asked the store if there was any security camera footage of the incident, but came up empty there, too.
“The stores stated that they do not have cameras in their parking lots,” Potts said.
Potts said she specifically moved to Cranberry Township to provide her son with a better education.
“We specifically picked this area of Butler County to move to for our son’s education,” Potts said. “To know that there’s people watching us park and ready to jump out of their vehicle and put something on our property … it really made us feel a certain way.”
Contrary to what was threatened on the note, the Potts family has not received a ticket from either state or Cranberry Township police.
“We called the Butler County Sheriff and we called Cranberry Township Police just to see if anyone had turned in our license plate to report us,” Potts said. “Both departments said no, no one had called.”
The Potts family received a large outpouring of community sympathy after Caterina posted a picture of the note on her Facebook page the day of the incident. As of Tuesday, the post has received 940 reactions.
“It’s spreading throughout social media,” Potts said. “You see tons of awareness being spread.”
Potts hopes the episode serves as a cautionary tale about disability harassment and prejudice.
“Mental health is a big thing right now,” Potts said. “And if they think that mental health is not something that is important with caregivers of children with disabilities, they’re wrong, because that note could have really sent someone who’s not as strong as I am into something that they really don’t want to be in.”
