SACRAMENTO - A Sacramento couple, both of whom served in Afghanistan, came home from a vacation to find their apartment had been broken into - and a box containing their daughter's ashes had been stolen.
"We were excited to come home. We wanted to relax," Kelly Smith said. "We came home to this, and it was not relaxing."
Kelly and Elliott Smith said it made them feel unwelcome in their own Pocket-area home.
"We first noticed that our TV was gone and I told him that we've been robbed. And we looked around and we noticed other things were gone too," Kelly said.
Someone had smashed a hole in their back window to get inside sometime Sunday, stealing laptops, textbooks and virtual reality headsets.
"Worth six grand," Kelly said. "We don’t care about any of that. We just want our daughter back."
Among the items stolen was a small wooden box with two tiny, pink footprints containing their daughter's ashes.
"Losing a child was the worst experience ever. I went through a deep depression and I just got through that," Kelly said.
Their daughter, Enola, was born with a rare genetic condition.
"She was five months early and she was passed, deceased," Kelly told KTXL. "I didn’t hold her when she came out. I didn’t want to, I was in too much pain. So, that’s all I have."
Now, the Smiths are making flyers in hopes that someone will find the ashes and return them. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Sacramento Police Department or the Smiths via email.
"They might not have even known that that was an urn," she said.
They're praying Enola’s ashes will be back in their living room soon, the only piece of their daughter they had left.
