A Guelph woman is hoping to recover the identification documents stolen from her car that she says are needed to complete her citizenship.
Sylvia Gawad said she was preparing to drive her daughter to school from her south-end home when she noticed her car had been entered.
She had left a teal Kate Spade wallet and some identification papers in the car’s glove compartment.
“My heart dropped and I knew exactly what would happen when I opened that glove box and of course the documents and the wallet weren’t in there,” said Gawad.
Some of the identification is under the name Selvia Gad.
She usually did not keep her immigration papers from her native Egypt in her wallet, but needed to keep them handy to renew some documents, including her recently expired passport.
“If an emergency happens back home I am stuck — I can’t go anywhere,” said Gawad.
The problem created by the stolen documents is compounded by Gawad being part way through a years-long process of becoming a Canadian citizen.
Now 29 years old, Gawad has been in Canada since she was 17, first living in Nova Scotia and six months ago moved to Guelph.
Gawad said she was expected to have earned her citizenship by now, but the process was stalled by the pandemic. If the process had not stalled, she might not be in the jam she is in now.
“It’s been document after document after document and now my wallet is stolen and I am going have to start it all over again,” she said.
Faced with no identification papers and the problems that creates for her, Gawad is taking the drastic step of travelling to Ottawa in person to appeal to the Egyptian embassy for help.
“I don’t know if I have the capacity to go through the process again,” she said.
Gawad hopes the person who took the wallet, or someone who comes across it, will contact her by email or turn it in to police.
“The simple act of someone stealing something is putting me through this journey I don’t want to be on,” said Gawad. "I though if I could just get through to the person who took it, they might not know how much I need it."
