Plans for a memorial in honour of slain teen Cooper Nemeth are back on track after a community member found and bought back a handful of hockey sticks stolen from the family in December.

"[The family] can't express their gratitude any more. They just — they're so happy and they're so humble that everybody kind of took time to make sure that these sticks got returned," said Andrew Skogen, a friend of the Nemeth family.

The family had been planning to use the sticks to build a commemorative bench in honour of their son, Cooper Nemeth, who was killed in February 2016 at age 17.

Roughly half of the 40 sticks donated by friends, teammates and family were stolen from the Nemeth family garage on Bonner Avenue on Dec. 28.

Recognized by special green tape

A community member saw the sticks for sale, recognizing the pieces of green tape the family used to organize them, and bought them back. (Submitted) On Dec. 30, another community member found some of the stolen sticks on the side of the road and returned those ones to the family.

Skogen says a community member — who preferred to remain anonymous — found the remaining sticks for sale and recognized them based on media and social media reports of the theft.

The family had been using pieces of green tape to keep track of the original owners of each stick, which tipped him off, Skogen said. The man then purchased the sticks and contacted the family to return them.

Included in the bundle is one stick belonging to Cooper's father, Brent Nemeth, which he used when he started teaching Cooper the game at age five.

"It's been a really tough week from them, not really sleeping, not really getting much done — just really upsetting for them," Skogen said.

"Now that the sticks are back they're just really excited that they can move forward with the bench, have the bench built and have this memorial piece in Cooper's honour."

With all the missing sticks back in their possession, Skogen said the family will move forward with their plan to turn them into a bench. Another family friend will build it.

Skogen said the family hopes to put the bench somewhere public in their neighbourhood, the North Kildonan area of Winnipeg.

"Potentially, you know, an arena in the community, something like that, just somewhere that people can see it," Skogen said.

"[The sticks] kind of have some significance to everybody because during the whole search when Cooper was missing and through the whole hockey sticks [theft] the community in North Kildonan really pulled together and made this happen."