CITRUS PARK - The Shopping Concierge desk at Westfield Citrus Park is busy with ringing phones, gift-card purchases and questions about mall hours and directions to stores. But the hottest items here are the free rental strollers, wheelchairs and scooters.

The mall normally stocks 20 strollers, six electric scooters and three manual wheelchairs. By 7 a.m., all were gone.

“You’re not going to see them all day,” said Teshia Gallagher, senior shopping concierge.

Sure enough, as soon as one is returned, someone else requests it. A woman stops by for an electric scooter but all are gone. She turns down the lone manual wheelchair, and a man snaps it up. A father with two little boys cases the empty holding pen.

“Nothing left?” he asks.

At 12:29 p.m., families return two strollers, brightly painted like cars and firetrucks. As soon as one is wiped down, another family loads it up with a little girl clutching a Shrek doll.

- Courtney Cairns Pastor

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