Thursday, Dec. 23, 2004 | 11:02 a.m.
A Henderson mom is hoping Christmas is not a silent night for her deaf children.
Earlier this week her family's minivan was stolen from their driveway, and in it were two state-of-the-art hearing aids that her 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter rely on.
Sitting at her kitchen table Wednesday afternoon, Suzie Misso tearfully said, "I just want them to get their ears back."
Matthew, 6, was born deaf and Kailey, 4, lost her hearing shortly after birth. Both recently were equipped with $6,000 cochlear ear implants -- which required a $50,000 surgery for each child at the Mayo Clinic -- and none of that was covered by insurance.
Misso is education coordinator for Nevada Child Seekers, a nonprofit group that looks for missing, abducted and runaway children and vice president of the Sue H. Morrow Elementary School Parent-Teacher Association.
"I do a lot of work with children, I can't believe this happened to mine," she said.
Misso said that because her husband, Elio, had just received a Christmas bonus, they spent Monday shopping for their children and other relatives.
They went to a friend's house, where they spent all night wrapping gifts as Matthew, Kailey and their 8-year-old sibling slept, she said. She had removed the external part of Matthew and Kailey's hearing devices because they don't wear them while sleeping.
They went home in the wee hours, and because their garage door was broken, she parked in the driveway.
She carried her sleeping children inside her home, locked the gold 2000 Plymouth Grand Voyager and left the hearing aids inside, along with her purse and the Christmas presents. The Missos were planning on taking the gifts to her family in Monterey, Calif., the next day.
Elio Misso saw the van in the driveway at 5:45 a.m., but when a neighbor left for work at 6:05 a.m. it was no longer there, she said.
Their neighborhood, near Lake Mead Parkway and Warm Springs Road, is quiet, and Misso said the biggest crime problem they know of in the 10 years they have lived there was gasoline siphoning.
Whoever took the van likely has no idea how much this has affected the Misso family financially and emotionally.
The cochlear hearing device consists of an internal implant and an external coil that hooks onto the ear.
Matthew and Kailey received their new hearing aids about three months ago, and the Missos spent three weeks at a clinic in Los Angeles learning how the device operates.
Before that, they both had a "body worn" cochlear device. It looks like an MP3 player and is worn on a belt around the waist with a thin cable connecting it to a small microphone worn behind the ear.
Kailey, who first got the surgery when she was 1, was the youngest person in the country to undergo the cochlear implant procedure, Misso said.
Her body-worn device was also in the van, so she cannot hear at all, Misso said.
"She wouldn't be able to hear a jet landing," Misso said. Luckily, Matthew still has his, but it works intermittently.
Kailey has a doll that wears a play version of the device, and after the van was stolen she tried to remove the device from the doll so she could wear it, her mother said.
On Wednesday, as Misso talked about the family's loss, Kailey came into the kitchen and spotted a dummy cochlear device that her mother was showing to a reporter.
The little girl became excited, thinking her device had been found.
"No, baby, yours is all gone," Misso said with tears in her eyes, hugging her daughter. "The policemen are looking for it."
By Wednesday night, a television news report about the Missos' loss had offers of help rolling in for the family.
The employees of a large Strip hotel, who asked that the name of the hotel not be published, have asked for her children's Christmas list so they can try to replace all the gifts that were stolen, Misso said this morning.
A valley man, Christopher Maglish, gave his Nintendo 64 video game system to the family as well as a racetrack and some arts and crafts.
Misso said she has been struck by the fact that it has been "paycheck-to-paycheck" people who have come forward offering to help her family in any way they can.
"The owner (of the Strip hotel) could buy new implants hands-over-fist without noticing, but it's the employees who are donating," Misso said.
Misso said the most touching offer came from Valerie Sanchez, a deaf woman, whose ear had rejected a cochlear implant. Sanchez offered that device to the family but it was a version that will not work with the children's implants.
Misso said her own "problems were nothing" compared to Sanchez's quest to hear, so Misso continues to hold onto hope that her children's hearing devices will be recovered. The family is already "medically in debt" for the devices and cannot afford the $12,000 it would cost to purchase new devices, Misso said.
A bank account has been set up for donations to the Misso family. For more information contact the Community One Federal Credit Union at 968-1219.
Anyone with information about the stolen van or hearing devices can call police at 267-5000.
The gold minivan has a "Dirt Diva" sticker on the back (a reference to the family's affinity for riding dirt bikes) and a stick-figure family with the two parents and three children.
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