Mom pleads for return of memorial cross honouring late daughter, who died from toxic drug overdose

Lori Wells has been grieving her daughter for more than a year, following her death from a drug overdose — and recently experienced another loss connected to her child.

Last week, Wells discovered the wooden cross placed in her daughter's memory had gone missing from a residential complex near Highway 16 in Prince George, B.C. 

Her 29-year-old daughter, Sandra Ferguson, had been struggling with drug and alcohol use and schizophrenia before she was found dead on April 12, 2022, amid freezing temperatures.

Wells, who lives in the Lower Mainland, travelled to Prince George last month to mark the anniversary of her daughter's death.

Wells brought a wooden cross created by Ferguson's boyfriend that was embossed with the name Sandra, along with an inscription of Ferguson's birth and death years, and placed it on the ground near a bush where her daughter's body was found.

But she was later told by Ferguson's boyfriend that the cross had gone missing.

Wells has put out a plea on social media for any information about the cross's whereabouts.

She has also been asking people in the community if they have any idea where the cross went and has offered to pay to have it shipped to her should it be found. 

"It would mean everything," she told host Sarah Penton on CBC's Radio West. "I just want to honour my kid — she was a wonderful kid."

In an email to the CBC, City of Prince George communications manager Julie Rogers said city roads staff "definitely did not" remove the cross.

"We do not have any policies on removing roadside memorials," Rogers said. "If it was on the strata property the City wouldn't have done anything there." 

Pain relief led to drug use

According to data from the B.C. Coroners Service, 84 people died of drug toxicity in Prince George last year.

Wells says Ferguson began using drugs habitually to relieve her pain after multiple doctors refused to treat her ovarian cyst.

She said Ferguson ended up losing her job and most of her friends due to her drug use, and then began using methamphetamine and cocaine under the influence of new friends.

"Sandra just loved life so much that she partied with everybody she knew," Wells said. "Some of those people weren't good people, so she got into some drugs that she shouldn't have gotten into."

Wells says if the cross is returned, she plans to take it home.

"I'll just make a little memorial in my yard," she said.