Robert Codrey spent five hours lost before Tauranga City council contractors came to his rescue. Photo / Andrew Warner
Robert Codrey spent five hours lost before Tauranga City council contractors came to his rescue. Photo / Andrew Warner
A visually-impaired man who spent five hours lost in Mount Maunganui has shared his story to thank those who came to his rescue, saying not enough people would do the same.
Robert Codrey, 69, left his Puriri St home at 6am on Tuesday for his daily walk, heading along MarineParade, Tweed St and Maunganui Rd before taking a wrong turn and ending up on Totara St and walking into a lamp post.
However, the mishap was noticed by Tauranga City Council contractors working nearby who came to Mr Codrey's aid, unaware he had been lost on his own for more than four hours.
"Because I walked into a lamp post, he came rushing up and told me to stay there," Mr Codrey said.
"They could have ignored me. I don't even know how they knew I was lost, although I suppose the lamp post really did it."
Robert Codrey spent five hours lost before Tauranga City council contractors came to his rescue. Photo / Andrew Warner
Mr Codrey is partially-sighted, meaning he can see some shapes and shadows but struggles to identify anything else. He wears special glasses to keep glare out of his eyes and uses a cane.
Mr Codrey said he usually navigated his morning walk without a problem but on this occasion "I was coming home and simply wasn't paying attention".
"I'd come back to Maunganui Rd from Tweed St and was coming back down to the library. When it gets to where the funeral parlour and McDonald's are it gets quite wide. There's nothing you can use as a reference point," he said.
"What I normally do is I keep the traffic to my right hand side and now and again I tap my cane on the concrete and I can hear the echo on the brick wall."
The traffic noise usually helps guide Mr Codrey but on this occasion there were no cars to listen to, he said.
"When I came off Maunganui Rd, I'd crossed the road without realising it. If there was traffic around, I would have known immediately I'd gone wrong."
Mr Codrey ventured as far as Hull Rd before he realised where he was.
"That's when the council staff came up first. I must have looked lost."
The contractors, of Smart Environmental, took Mr Codrey back to Maunganui Rd, at Rata St, where he told them he would be okay to find his way back, but he then walked into a lamp post. The council staff took Mr Codrey and dropped him off outside his home, waiting for him to get in okay, he said.
Mr Codrey said he was so heartened by the efforts of the two contractors who helped him and took him home, the first thing he did when he got inside was call the council to ensure they were recognised by their boss.
"I would like to think that if others saw someone like me, they would help them."
Mr Codrey said people often struggled to know how to deal with visually-impaired people.
"If we have guide dogs, people fall over themselves to help.
"But if I only have my cane, they come up and stand away from you. They yell and wave their hands about saying 'what do I do?' because they don't know," he said.
Blind Foundation spokesman Ben Watson said members of the public should simply ask if they were unsure if a visually impared person needed help.
