Among the items nabbed from the car of a 23-year-old man in the Mission District earlier this week was something truly irreplaceable – his grandmother’s ashes.
According to reports by SFGate, Joel Perkins had parked his car near 14th and Mission streets on Tuesday night to visit a friend in the area. Upon returning, Perkins noticed that his car had been broken into and that a bicycle that he had stored inside of it was missing.
But it wasn’t until the next day that Perkins discovered that a box containing the ashes of his grandmother, Sophie Perkins, had also been swiped during the break-in. Per SFGate:
When he left his friend’s building and discovered the break-in, it was obvious his bike had been stolen. It was only after he began vacuuming glass off the floor that he noticed the ashes, too, were missing.
Robert Rueca, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department, confirmed the incident and told Mission Local that Perkins had filed an online police report and that an investigator has been assigned to the case to help track the stolen ashes down.
“There is an effort in trying to follow up on leads,” said Rueca. Perkins said that he had been combing the surrounding area for days after the incident, hopeful to recover his grandmother’s ashes.
Perkins said that he had stored the ashes in his car because he had been tasked with transporting them from Washington to San Diego, as his grandfather was selling the family property where Perkins’ grandmother’s ashes had until recently been buried. Perkins decided to make the journey by car, reckoning that transporting the ashes himself would be safer then sending his grandmother’s remains by mail.
Just last month, a North Carolina woman found herself in a similar predicament after her father’s ashes were stolen from a rental car that she had parked near Fisherman’s Wharf – the woman had planned to scatter the ashes in the Redwoods. Fortunately, police were able to recover the stolen ashes days later.
Crime is trauma and the county offers different services, which can be found here. Victims of violent crime can also contact the Trauma Recovery Center at UCSF.