JACKSONVILLE – A woman who needs her wheelchair to get around in an apartment building relies heavily on an elevator that’s been down since Friday.
Sara Gaver lives on the second floor of the Wynnfield Lakes Apartments and is wondering what is happening.
Gaver said she sat in her car for five hours and called emergency maintenance five times with no answer.
She ended up calling the Fire Department for help as a last resort, and they finally got her upstairs where she’s been until Sunday.
Gaver needed to get downstairs to her car but couldn’t use the elevator to do so.
“I figured I would find my way down the staircase,” Gaver said. “This is a little ridiculous and it is really painful.”
Gaver moved to Wynnfield Lakes Apartments a month ago.
"I was told there are elevators to get to the second floor so it’s fine, and I said, 'Well, how reliable are they? Because I don’t wanna be in a situation where I can’t get to my apartment,' and I was told they are reliable," she said. "If anything were to happen, they would have them fixed right away."
But she quickly learned that wasn’t the case. Gaver said in the past four weeks, she’s been stuck in this same situation four times.
"I really would just like to be on a first floor," she said. "I cannot keep relying on something unreliable, and the fact that nobody can answer me and nobody can get things taken care of in a timely fashion, it’s just not fair to me, and I don’t want other parts of my life to fall apart because of it."
Gaver says she has had to miss work in the past month because of the elevator situation, and unfortunately, she is probably going to have to miss it again Monday morning.
We did reach out to the apartment complex and tried going into its office, but it is closed on Sundays.