WEST VALLEY CITY — It was less than a year ago that Anna Thayer lost her mother after a long battle with cancer.
Now, Thayer and her family have suffered another loss: all of their mother's possessions were stolen from a storage shed.
"We're talking video reels, film reels, photo albums, journals, letters my mom had to my dad that she kept, grade school cards, grade school pictures, grade school stories, her high school diploma, her high school yearbook, my brother's yearbook was in there, family pictures we had hanging on the walls, just all this stuff we can't replace. Who wants my mom's journal? What are they going to find in there?" a frustrated Thayer said Thursday.
In May, JeNean Carver, a longtime employee at KSL TV, passed away. Her son and two daughters boxed up many of her belongings that she had in the same house she had lived in since the early 1980s to divide up amongst them.
When Zach Carver moved to Portland, Ore., his sister said she would watch the mementos he had collected. He planned to organize them and show them one day to his children so they would know their grandmother. While her basement was being remolded, Thayer recently put those items in a storage facility that claimed to be secure.
This week, when she went to check on the items, she found the padlock had been cut off and thrown away and her shed ransacked.
"Your stuff is gone, I have nothing to give you from Mom. Nothing at all," she told her brother. "We can't find anything that you have here left."
Adding to their frustrations, the storage shed company said their video surveillance system was not operating at the time and did not record anything.
The family is hoping now that the public and law enforcers can help them retrieve their mother's irreplaceable possessions.
"These were a chance for us to get to know our mom on another level, and really have her kind of around still," Zach Carver said.
Many of the missing boxes have Zach's name written on them with a Sharpie.
Anyone with information can call police at 801-840-4000.
Email: preavy@desnews.com, Twitter: DNewsCrimeTeam