Man’s ashes recovered 3 days after being stolen in SF

Julia Wilkinson (back), of Charlotte, North Carolina, hugs her mother Mary Wilkinson (front) a day after her father's ashes were stolen from their rental car on Wednesday afternoon. Julia Wilkinson (back), of Charlotte, North Carolina, hugs her mother Mary Wilkinson (front) a day after her father's ashes were stolen from their rental car on Wednesday afternoon. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close Man’s ashes recovered 3 days after being stolen in SF 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

Three days after her husband’s ashes were stolen from a Fisherman’s Wharf garage, Mary Wilkinson received the phone call she thought she never would just as she regained cell service leaving Muir Woods with her daughter.

“She just said, ‘I just want to let you know we have your husband’s remains,’” Wilkinson said of the San Francisco Police Department lieutenant on the line Saturday evening. “And I just broke down and started crying.”

From the passenger seat of the rented 2016 Hyundai Elantra that was broken into Wednesday afternoon — the day before she planned to scatter the ashes of her husband, Joe, a nature lover, among the redwoods of the North Coast on what would have been his 57th birthday — Mary’s daughter, Julia, likewise lost it.

Shaking, Wilkinson pulled over to the side of the road, as she and her daughter struggled to make sense of what minutes earlier had seemed longer than a longshot.

“I felt like it was a one-in-a-million shot of getting him back,” Julia said. “I really think this was a miracle.”

The pair from North Carolina had eaten scantily and slept little since the metallic scattering tube wrapped in a velvet pouch went missing Wednesday afternoon from the Anchorage Square Garage at 500 Beach St., where they had left it locked in the trunk while they munched on Dungeness crab, as Joe would have done.

Saturday night, they drank wine, they downed celebratory sushi and they were at peace, with no knotted stomachs or racing thoughts, in a way they hadn’t been since Wednesday afternoon.

Along with the ashes, after jimmying open the trunk in broad daylight inside the garage, thieves stole cash, credit cards and thousands of dollars’ worth of clothing — Julia was left with quite literally the clothes on her back. A parking attendant at the garage, which has not responded to repeated requests for comment, told her that theirs was the third such break-in Wednesday alone.

Though the pair called 311, then 911, to report the crime, an operator and a dispatcher both told them they’d have to file a report online or come in person to the station, saying no officer could or would respond to the scene of a commonplace car break-in in San Francisco.

Though Julia was “angry at first that (police) didn’t listen to us,” she said Sunday that she was “grateful that they put the time and effort in after they found out.”

The city logged 25,899 such break-ins in 2015, an average of 70 a day. Officers started investigating Thursday after the incident was first reported by The Chronicle, and undercover officers scoured the Wharf for suspects.

Mary said police told her Saturday that a man had “dropped off” the ashes that meant so much to her earlier in the day. He wasn’t arrested.

The lieutenant told the woman she could instigate a citizen’s arrest for fraud if she wanted, as whoever had her credit card loaded more than $100 on a Clipper card and tried to make a purchase at a Ross on Market Street. But it didn’t appear that police had enough evidence to link the man to much else, and the other missing items weren’t recovered.

“We don’t have the wallet or the credit cards or anything, just him, but that’s the main, important thing that we wanted, my dad,” Julia said.

Mary had been with her husband, a Philadelphia native who loved pranks and his family and the Philadelphia Flyers, for 33 years before he died suddenly from a heart attack Aug. 19. She had blamed herself for what happened. She couldn’t help it.

The two met when he interviewed her for a job on his birthday in 1983, started dating a few months later and wed in August 1985.

With a sinking stomach, these past few days she would think about all the times with Joe she treasured most — him dressing up in a Dracula cape to greet Julia’s first suitor at 15 came to mind — and she would ponder how his cremains were “probably somewhere horrible.”

“I felt like I messed something really seriously up, and it was him, and he was a part of me,” she said.

Before their flight home to Charlotte on Tuesday, Mary and Julia said they finally planned to actually enjoy their vacation, perhaps seeing Golden Gate Park, perhaps simply seeing the city. They wouldn’t be scattering Joe’s ashes anywhere, Julia said, as the two were reluctant to even let his cremains “out of our sight.”

Then?

“We’re taking him home,” Julia said. “We are taking him home.”

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley