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Auckland Hospital - Source: ONE News -
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Auckland hospital is investigating a spate of jewellery thefts in its elderly patient wards.
After ONE News ran a story on a widow's wedding rings being allegedly snatched while she was in surgery, other incidents have come to light.
Seventy-year-old Dorothy Brown's wedding rings vanished at the hospital but her case was just one of eight jewellery thefts reported since January, many within wards for the elderly.
Since the story was aired on ONE News Brown has been gifted with new rings from a jeweller who heard what happened. But while she is thankful and says it has helped restore her faith in others, she says the new rings will never really replace the ones stolen from her.
Stephanie Wood's 88-year-old mother was another victim and she says she is disgusted at the thieves.
"I think it's absolutely despicable, that they're targeting the old, the frail, the sick," says Wood.
Wood says two young women came in and said they were Mormons. One of them sat on one side of the bed and distracted her mother by helping fill in the dinner menu, and the other one was stroking her hand and fondling her and saying what nice skin she had.
When they had gone, the 88-year-old realised her watch had too.
Another patient's family said their mother was visited by a woman in a white doctor's-style coat. She told her she would come to "check her neck" and left with her gold necklace.
Director of Nursing, Taima Campbell, is apologetic.
"We're really sorry for the loss of those personal items and we're doing our best to investigate what's going on and to see whether or not there are other things we could have done better or differently," says Campbell.
When asked how it was possible for someone to come into a hospital and literally take jewellery off patient's bodies in some cases, Campbell says such cases are possible since the hospital is a very large building.
"We're a public building, we're a public facility. We have 1000 beds and patients here at any given time, so I guess for anyone to walk in here is really easy."
She says staff tell incoming patients and their families they are responsible for their own things.
"If you have valuable items, you should really take them home or let people know so they can be put away for safekeeping," says Campbell.
Police suspect the patients' valuables are being pawned off and are working with hospital security to stop it.
