Cremains lost in Tacoma car theft wound up in CA. Here’s how they’ll get back to T-town

Mike Farrell always enjoyed road trips, according to his son, former Pierce County Council member Tim Farrell. Hopefully, that extended into the afterlife.

Mike Farrell’s cremated remains disappeared in September after the car they were in was stolen in Tacoma. The vehicle was recovered but not the box containing Farrell’s ashes.

After weeks of uncertainty, the cremains appeared unexpectedly at a southern California mortuary Tuesday.

The saga began Sept. 21 when Tim Farrell’s 1990 Honda Civic was stolen outside his Tacoma home while he was out of the state on business.

The car was recovered Sept. 28 in Parkland, but the ashes were nowhere to be found.

Mike Farrell died in February. The retired U.S. Marine Corps Reserve sergeant was cremated at Memory Park Memorial Garden and Mortuary in Brea, California, and his ashes were placed into two purple boxes. Farrell kept one container of cremains in his car and another in his truck.

Their presence comforted him, reminding him of the many road trips his family took while growing up.

“Every year, we would constantly go up to the mountains,” Farrell said in September.

Car recovered

On Sept. 28, a Pierce County Sheriff’s Department sergeant was driving on 104th Street South when he spotted Farrell’s stolen car. It stood out because it was missing its front license plate. The car sped off when the sergeant made a U-turn to investigate, according to Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Sgt. Darren Moss.

The car pulled over a short time later, and the driver ran off. The sergeant quickly caught up with the 27-year-old Parkland man. He was arrested for on suspicion of car theft, driving with a suspended license, obstruction, and, because he is a convicted felon, unlawful possession of a firearm, Moss said.

After Farrell paid a $300 towing fee, he got his car back. Along with physical damage, Farrell found a variety of clothes and other personal items that weren’t his inside the Honda. There was no sign of his father’s remains.

Ashes found

About the same time the car was found, a funeral director at Memory Park in California got a call from a woman in Tacoma who said she had found a box of cremains on her hotel’s property. Information inside the box linked the cremains to Mike Farrell and the mortuary.

The funeral director, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Noelle, wasn’t aware of the Farrell theft, and she urged the woman to turn the remains over to the Pierce County medical examiner.

Shannon Porter, an office assistant with the Medical Examiner’s Office, said two women came into her office in late September with a box of cremains they wanted to turn in.

The women told Porter the cremains had been left in a waiting room at the Tacoma medical clinic at which they worked. Porter told the women the office didn’t accept cremains and to turn them in to the police instead.

On Wednesday, when shown a picture of the purple box that Farrell’s ashes were in, Porter said it was an identical match to the box the two women had.

Arrival

On Tuesday, the cremains arrived in the mail at Memory Park. Labeling showed it was sent from Tacoma, but there was no return address or note inside, Noelle said.

Noelle immediately called Tim Farrell when she was able to link the cremains to Mike Farrell. She said she is going to mail them back to Tacoma.

“I’m glad that he will be able to get his loved one with him once again,” she said.

Farrell is happy to get his father’s remains back. His dad’s road trips — planned and unplanned — will soon be over. Tim Farrell said he’s either going to scatter the ashes or place them in an interment niche.

He doesn’t think his dad would have minded travel by U.S. Postal Service.

“My dad always traveled coach,” he said.