When Airdrie resident, Mark Chappell found himself standing in his front doorway with a broken nose, covered in cuts, and abrasions, his family was just in as much shock as he was.

On Sunday, September 3, at around 4:30 p.m., Chappell set off on his bike towards his work, the local pub, Wild Card Shack, where he works as a cook. An estimated 25 minutes later he was back home with memory loss.

"I remember riding my bike towards my work and then around Allen Street, Main Street is the last thing I remember. The next thing I knew, I was at home," he said. "I was telling my family that I didn't remember what I was doing there."

Although he didn't immediately notice he was injured, his family did and immediately rushed him to Airdrie's Urgent Care Centre. After a few hours there, Chappell was transferred to the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary for CT scans, and to resect his nose.

"I thought it was 2021; the doctor said I had a pretty bad concussion."

When asked if he knew what happened to the bike, the bike did make it home with him, but he said that there was damage to the it. 

"The bike seems mostly okay. The derailleur is all messed up for the bigger gears in the front. The chain is off, my front brakes are ripped off. Apparently, my front tire was off completely.  The RCMP came by - while I was at the hospital just to look at the bike. He [the officer] put the front wheel back on, but the front brakes were completely taken off."

When his co-workers at Wild Card Shack found out what had happened, a social media post was created in the hopes that anyone who saw what might have happened to Chappell might step forward with information.

He said he's both surprised and not surprised by how quickly his co-workers stepped up to support him and his family.

"Rhys [Eckardt - the owner of Wildcard Shack] is a really good guy. I'm not really surprised with the support and yet I say, yes I am surprised because it's not often that people just come to step up to the plate. So, in that sense, I was surprised but not surprised, because they're all pretty good people."

He added that for the time being all he wants is closure.

"All I need, is to know what happened. I don't like not knowing what happened. If I fell off my bike, I fell off my bike. If I got hit by a car, I got hit by a car - I just want to know what happened."

A GoFundMe campaign has been set up by Chappell's wife in light of the event. It has amassed over $1,250 in donations thus far.

"It has been very challenging for us as a family with young children... We're not asking for much, but as of right now, he can't work and I cannot support us on my own. He will also need a new mouth plate (he has no top teeth now) and I don't have the money for this... Mark works [three] jobs to help us pay our bills every month and at this point in time, he cannot work any of them," his wife wrote on the GoFundMe page.

Airdrie RCMP confirmed that the family did report the incident. 

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