Posted on 01/11/2007 6:07:15 AM PST by ShadowDancer
Thief Returns Child's Cremated Remains
Burglar Stole Valuables, Boy's Ashes
POSTED: 6:52 am EST January 11, 2007
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. -- Eve and Steven Greene made a simple plea to the burglar who broke into their house: Keep the valuables. Return the cremated remains of their 4-year-old son.
"Just drop it off somewhere with a note on it," Steven Greene said. "And that'll be that."
It worked.
Someone left the urn containing the ashes of 4-year-old Zachary Greene at the end of the Greenes' driveway Wednesday morning, two days after it was taken in a burglary.
Police said a burglar broke into the home, snacked on Cheerios and tracked mud all over the house as he filled pillowcases with about $10,000 worth of valuables -- and Zachary's ashes.
Zachary died of cancer in 2005. His parents kept the urn above their fireplace next to a Play Doh fire truck Zachary made before he died.
A thief who watches the news AND has something of a conscience. Who knew?
Any thief who likes Cheerios has to be a decent guy. And, it has to be a man because a woman thief would never have tracked mud all over the house.
Great story.
Maybe not. I had almost the exact same thing happen to me a while back (except my wallet likely fell out of my bag and was not actually stolen). The postman who delivered the package told me that someone probably found the wallet and dropped it off at the nearest post office.
The local newscast is always popular at the county jail. Inmates watch to see if they or their buds made the news.
I wonder if more like watch the news to see who has a reward leading to the arrest of....
one of their buds.
Need money on their books.
My sister-in-law had her wallet stolen. The thief took the money and threw the wallet in the mail box. The post office returned her wallet.
I never thought of that but you are probably right.
Found a wallet once. Destroyed the CCs and called the owner to tell him I had done so and would drop the wallet in the mail. He told me to keep the money. I did.
It worked.
It worked, more likely than not, because it is rather difficult to fence cremated human remains.
Maybe the guy has a heart, who knows...but breaking into someone's house and taking their stuff tends to say that he doesn't have much of one.
Was he kind enough to put his return address on the package, so that your sister could send a thank you note (you know, one that's wrapped in blue)?
So did I, at lunchtime in tree planter in the middle of Manhattan. I felt sleazy opening it up back at the office (with a friend who was with me at the time), but I got the lady's home address, looked up her number and left a message. An hour later I got a phone call from her, and she picked it up about 1/2 hour after that. She got all of her cash, credit cards and papers back...and I felt pretty good about helping her out.
I guess that I'd make a pretty rotten thief.
Me three. The wallet I found was laying in the street, with driver's license, etc., all in it, though the cash was gone. The man it belonged to lived nearby, so I walked over to his apartment and gave it to his wife, but it felt kind of awkward talking to her because I think she thought I had taken the money. If I were in her place I guess I'd suspect the same.
I found a woman's wallett once in a very rotten neighborhood. I gathered up all the papers and cards that were strewn around but left the wallet as it was muddy and torn up. When I called her, she got real snotty that I left the wallet behind.
Nice guy that I am, I retrieved the wallet the next day.
Didn't get much of a thanks from her.
But, a while later I found a full diaper bag. The owner gave me $75 for returning it. (I tried to not accept it)
We were on our way to church one Sunday with our jedis and when we got there we found that the service had already started (it was a special Christmas service). We hated it but rather than barge in, we decided to go back home.
On the way home, we found an entire purse in the middle of the road! We stopped, gathered up all the belongings and put it back into the purse and when I looked in the wallet, it was packed with cash and had a driver's license. The address showed a house nearby and I figured out that the lady had likely put the purse on her car and it fell off when she turned onto the street.
So we drove back down the street to the address and drove up just in time to see a woman running hysterically out of her house! I rolled down my window and said "Did you loose something?" and held up her purse. She was SO relieved! Just as I thought, she had sat it on her car.
She tried to give us ten dollars but we wouldn't take it. The good feeling was our reward. I felt like it was a good day...even though we missed church.
A thief isn't necessarily an amoral person. They know the rules, they just make the decision to break them for a short term gain. So they could have a sense of right and wrong, it's just that they vote for 'wrong' more often than not.
Thieves also tend to not be killers, traditionally. Well, that was the old guideline, anyway. They also tend to hate confrontation and go to great lengths to avoid it.
An old slogan was "I'm a thief, but not a rat." They have a moral code, as strange at is it.
It's really not that surprising to me that a professional thief would return the item to the folks.
It's really not that surprising to me that a professional thief would return the item to the folks.
______
A cheerio eating, muddy shoeprint leaving thief sounds more like a druggie than a pro, which actually makes sense to me in this context, he just wants stuff that can be converted to cash.
Even druggies have hearts :)
That's certainly true, too.
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