VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – To Kathryn McCaskill, it was almost as if she’d lost her son twice.
On June 5, her world came crashing down after a thief entered her truck and stole something very special to her, her bracelet containing her late 1-year-old son’s ashes.
Her son Clayton died from a rare medical disorder the day after his 1st birthday nearly two years ago.
“I was just really at a loss for words,” McCaskill said, recalling the moment she realized someone had stolen the bracelet.
She said it happened when she forgot to leave the bracelet, along with another gifted to her by her grandmother, at home when she and her husband went kayaking.
She took them off and put them in their truck, but forgot to take them back out when they got to their house in Virginia Beach.
“I was very anxious because I knew that the more time that went by that we didn’t catch someone, that there was a higher chance that these bracelets could get further and further away from us,” McCaskill said.
They filed a police report, but McCaskill and her husband also made it their mission to search themselves.
They asked their neighbors to look at their security cameras for the night of June 5, and when that didn’t work they didn’t stop.
“So, I wrote letters to the neighbors and we drove around in any home within this vicinity that we saw that had a camera,” McCaskill said. “We got some duct tape and we stuck it to their mailbox in hopes that maybe they would check their cameras.”
She has a message for whoever took the bracelets.
“If there is any chance that these items could be returned to us, I would be willing to drop the charges from this investigation,” McCaskill said. “We’re really just asking for people to do the right thing.”
