PROVIDENCE — The four members of the Ford family of Smith Hill are having the world’s worst run of bad luck.

As the family slept on Dec. 6, a thief entered their apartment and stole a wallet, purse, car and house keys and Christmas presents. Then the thief stole the family car, a green 1993 Subaru station wagon, which contained the daughter’s wheelchair.

The police recovered the car, which had been abandoned behind a factory on Hartford Avenue. But the thief, who apparently still had the stolen car keys, returned Sunday night, and took the car again. The alleged culprit then led the police on a chase in which the uninsured car was wrecked.

“I want to move out of here,” the desperate mother of the family, Christine Ford, 40, said yesterday. “We were very scared last night. I barricaded my kids and me in my bedroom.”

The family members, who occupy the first-floor apartment in a triple-decker at 508 Chalkstone Ave., include the father, Donald, who works as a security guard and takes the bus to his job; daughter Barbara, 16; and son Benjamin, 8.

The police arrested Fernando Lopez, 25, of 30 Pekin St., Smith Hill, who they said was driving the stolen car, and lodged six charges against him, including auto theft, according to Maj. Thomas F. Oates III, commander of the Investigative Division.

Even after the Dec. 6 incident, the family’s spirit had been bolstered for a time. Barbara, an epileptic and special-needs student at the Birch Vocational School, which is housed at Mount Pleasant High School, relied heavily on the missing wheelchair. But an anonymous donor gave the family a replacement wheelchair after the crime was reported in The Providence Journal.

The staff at Roger Williams Medical Center took up a collection and gave the Fords replacement Christmas gifts, according to Mrs. Ford and the hospital staff. The Fords were hosted at a small party at the hospital.

And the police found the car a few days before Christmas, according to Mrs. Ford. That was crucial, she said, because she needs the car to take Barbara to doctor appointments and to pick her up at school if she has a seizure.

But Sunday night, shortly after her husband left for work, Mrs. Ford heard the car being started. She looked out the window and saw it being backed out of the driveway. She called the police.

The chase began when the police spotted the stolen car on Route 6 and pursued it onto Route 10 south, Oates related. On the Union Avenue exit ramp, he said, the stolen car crashed into another car and pushed the second car into a police cruiser operated by Patrolman Eugene Chin.

The pursuit continued along Huntington Avenue and Dexter and Althea streets, until Lopez ran into a curb and the stolen car came to a halt, according to Oates. When Lopez refused to get out, Oates said, officers broke the driver’s side window and pulled him out.

Nobody suffered a serious injury, according to police reports.

Lopez was wanted on an arrest warrant that charged him with first-degree robbery and intent to commit sexual assault, and the police added five more charges. He is being held at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Ford said she does not know how much more bad luck she can withstand. She did not pay the last auto insurance bill because she lacked the money, so the policy lapsed and the loss is not insured.

“I’m waiting for that rainbow” after the storm, she said.

gsmith@projo.com