‘Hallelujah’: Man’s stolen ashes returned to Snohomish family

SNOHOMISH — Joyce Graham sees it as a brave and noble act.

Not the theft of her son’s car, with the box of her late husband’s ashes inside, but the way the ashes were quietly returned to her Sunday.

Someone left the ashes at an Everett cemetery, where they were sure to be found. A stranger recognized the box from a newspaper story and called police.

Graham doesn’t have all the answers about what happened, but she has the ashes back.

“We were delighted,” she said Monday. “Hallelujah.”

Her family gathered for breakfast Sunday morning. They transferred the ashes from the box into the urn — a Jim Beam decanter shaped like a car, because Richard “Dick” Graham was a car salesman.

He died in July, at 84, after years of struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. The couple’s son Troy, one of four kids, had picked up the ashes from the funeral home and left them overnight in his Honda CRV. The car was stolen from the parking garage of his apartment complex. Police put out a bulletin asking for tips.

Then, at about 8 a.m. Sunday, an Everett woman and her sister were out for a walk at a local cemetery. They saw the box, which was covered with a velvet bag. They brought it to funeral home staff. The woman who found the box declined Monday to be interviewed by a reporter.

The police called Troy, and delivered the ashes to him, Joyce Graham said.

Her son “brought them right over,” she said. “He said he wasn’t going to leave them anyplace.”

The car, a white, four-door 1999 model, with Washington license plate AKG1121, hasn’t been found. Detectives are working on it, officer Aaron Snell said Monday.

“A note was with the urn requesting the remains be returned to the family but it is unknown who left the urn or wrote the note,” he said.

The tin box that held the ashes was missing its lid, Joyce Graham said. The box was banged up and had been opened.

She was married to Dick for 61 years.

Now his urn is on her mantle, “right where it’s supposed to be,” she said.

As for the person who returned the ashes? “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.