Karel Carter says her 91-year-old mother is devastated and feeling gutted after someone walked in and stole the widow’s priceless wedding rings out of her central Nanaimo home.
“It’s almost like a light went out in her when I showed her her jewellery box and they were gone. And I want to give her that light back. It was the last piece she had of my Dad. It would mean the world,” said Karel Carter, a Nanaimo resident.
According to Carter, her mother’s elaborate diamond engagement and wedding rings were taken off during the 91-year-old’s recent hospitalization. They were tucked away in a jewelry box inside the senior’s home in late February, alongside cash to pay the person mowing her lawn. But when the senior went to use that cash this week, she found it was gone, and so were her irreplaceable rings.
“Those rings were the last memories she has of her husband,” said Larry Carter, the victim’s son-in-law.
“And I would like nothing more than to give them back to her,” said Karel Carter.
Since the rings were reported stolen on Tuesday, the senior’s now grown afraid of retribution from the only people her family believes were in her home when the rings vanished — her home care workers.
“There was nobody else. Just us and her home support workers, that’s all,” said Karel Carter.
Nanaimo RCMP are investigating and asking for the public’s assistance.
“The organization that employs the workers denies any involvement in this incident,” wrote R Const. Gary O’Brien in the press release from the Nanaimo RCMP.
But according to Karel Carter, since her mother’s theft there have been several more people that have reached out to her with similar accounts.
“This is happening to so many of our seniors,” she said.
Carter is calling every pawn shop on Vancouver Island, looking for her mother’s distinctive diamond rings, and is pleading for whoever took them, to have a heart.
“No questions asked, please. Just please bring them back,” said Carter.
As this family tries desperately to find those rings, and restore a trust now shaken.
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Skye Ryan
