A Montreal woman whose purse was stolen from her garage is pleading with the thief to return a handful of mementoes that were in the bag, including the ashes of her deceased father.
Leane Stewart says she’s fairly certain she closed the door to her garage late last Thursday night, after driving her car home. But she found the garage door open the next morning, and discovered that the mauve messenger bag she’d left in the passenger seat was gone.
Stewart says the bag contained treasured keepsakes from her late father’s battle with cancer, along with a Christian Madonna pendant that he was wearing when he died and a small amount of his ashes.
Her father, Sterling, died in February, less than a year after he was diagnosed with cancer. Stewart scattered most of his ashes in the ocean, as he requested, but kept some with her as a way to remember him.
“It was just the only tangible thing I had left of my dad, so I just carried it with me all the time,” Stewart told CTV Montreal. “It was like losing him again,” she said. “It’s just not right.”
Stewart says she’s not as concerned with the loss of her e-reader or day planner, which were also in the bag. But she’s hoping the thief will see her story in the news and return the ashes, if he or she hasn’t thrown them away.
She suggests the thief “toss it back on her balcony” or turn the ashes in to the police, “no questions asked.”
Police told Stewart the ashes are likely gone, but she’s holding out hope that she might get remains of her father back.
“That’s all I have left,” she said.
With files from CTV Montreal
