A WOMAN whose garden lights were heartlessly stolen has had her faith in people restored after community members rallied round.

Dawn Davies, who is terminally-ill with cancer, spoke out angrily about ‘scum’ who stole her garden lights in the Echo last week.

The heartless thieves took her five solar garden lights when she was away for the weekend with her husband Nick.

Mrs Davies, of Wyke Regis, said that the ‘only joy’ she had left was looking at the garden and that thieves had taken that away.

After the article appeared in the Echo, offers of donations of new lights came in thick and fast.

John and Karen Pearce from Alf’s Fish and Chips gave £50 for new lights and Gould’s Garden Centre will be delivering a new set of lights to Mrs Davies after staff member Jane Dandy alerted them to the Echo story.

Youngsters from Steps Youth Club have also offered to take Mrs Davies out to afternoon tea.

The Terras Football fan even had a surprise visit from Weymouth Football Club manager and some players who donated new lights and gave her a signed shirt. Manager Brendon King said that Mrs Davies had been a long-term supporter of theirs and had travelled round the country to see them in the past and they wanted to do something to help.

He said: “It was great. We were more than happy to do it.”

John Pearce from Alf’s said: “You can’t buy a smile.”

He said that Mrs Davies often came into the shop and she was always smiling and friendly and they wanted to do something to make her smile.

Tom Lane from Steps said that after hearing that Mrs Davies had had several donations of lights the youngsters said they would like to take her out for an afternoon tea instead.

Mr Lane said: “It makes you want to reach out to another human being and make their life better. It is just an awful thing to have happened to her.”

Steps member Hazel Pritchard, 18, said: “It’s lovely that the community came together to help and for us as young people we saw that someone needed supporting and we are looking forward to taking Mrs Davies out for tea.”

Mrs Davies said she had been touched by everyone’s kindness.

She said: “I’d like to say a big thank you to everybody.

“It’s really nice that there are people out there that care. That it takes something like this to realise how much people care and they are not all bad. It put a big smile on my face.”