A man who was visiting Syracuse, North Carolina had his pickup truck stolen—along with his father’s ashes still lodged under the back seat

Tom Rice had driven into town for his nephew’s wedding, and parked his blue Ford F-150 SuperCrew in a garage adjacent to a Courtyard Marriot.

It was a beautiful mid-fall evening, and Rice, accompanied by his golden retriever Marshall, thought he’d walk the necessary blocks to the venue rather than drive.

After a night of fun and celebration, Rice woke up to a disaster—his truck was simply gone, along with his father’s ashes.

 Rice told WSYR, Channel 9, “I walked out, and it was gone. I came in just to make sure it had not been towed for some reason, and nobody knew anything, and I called 911.”

His father had died on October 9th, nine days prior to the wedding. Rice had just been up to Connecticut where his father lived to retrieve the ashes before driving down to NC. He said that there was a space under the back seat where the box containing them fit perfectly.

Fortunately, the truck was found over that weekend—abandoned in Syracuse. Either for reasons of decency or because they realized they weren’t of value, the thieves, who despite ransacking the contents of the truck, left the ashes behind along with many of his father’s other effects including his documents, and scale models of some of the planes he worked on as an engineer at Northrup Grumman.

Now that the ashes are recovered, Rice’s family plans to have his father’s service in November.