Cathy Rivas pleads for return of father's stolen ashes

Cathy Rivas was hoping to make peace with her long-deceased father by burying his ashes in Archerwill Sask., the town where he last lived.

Now, she can't do that. The urn containing his ashes is missing and presumed stolen.

"I was devastated," Rivas said. "I went through the bins over and over again, hoping I'd come across them, that maybe they were packed in Christmas stuff."

She moved to Archerwill from Toronto last February.

Belongings left outdoors

Rivas said she kept all of her belongings in blue plastic totes, including the wooden box with her father's ashes.

"I had to leave them outside because the house was not safe," Rivas explained.

She first left them under a tarp tied with straps. In May, she moved everything into a tent.

"But I didn't realize that there were things missing because I had about a hundred totes," Rivas continued.

In September, she started unpacking. At that point started to realize things were missing, "and it dawned on me my father's ashes were in one of those totes."

Hoping someone comes forward

She decided against calling police, hoping that if she didn't press charges, someone might come forward with information. So instead, she posted notices around town and contacted the local newspaper.

Rivas is convinced someone local stole the tote containing the urn and several other items.

"The person that took them had to know the house was vacant, and if you're not local you wouldn't have known that," she explained.

So far, there's been no word and no sign of what was taken.

The urn is a rectangular light-coloured wooden box, varathaned, with a cutout picture of a tractor pasted on it. The other missing items include a combination VCR/DVD player, several mason jars with clamp-on lids, a rice-maker and some lamps.

Now, with her search having lasted a couple of months, Rivas is finally thinking of going to the police. That's going to be difficult because she works most of the time, juggling three or four different jobs.

​Rivas' father, Steve Lastiwka, came to Archerwill from Ontario 20 years ago. He died almost nine years ago.

Rivas travelled out, had him cremated, and brought his ashes back home to Ontario, thinking she would bury them there. But then she had second thoughts "because he was happy here [in Archerwill,] and I was coming to live here, I thought I would just bring him back here and bury him."

Much of their family life was not so happy. Her parents separated after Rivas, the eldest child, was already grown and starting her own family. Her father moved to Archerwill, and Rivas two only saw him once after that, when he was passing through Ontario and stopped in to visit.

"There was a lot of family strain," Rivas recounted, tearing up. "It was really my way of putting everything to rest. It wasn't a pleasant childhood, and alcohol was a big problem with him."

She went on: "I mean I still loved him, he was my father, and nobody else wanted to take the responsibility to come and bury him."

Rivas still hopes whoever has the urn and ashes will leave them on her back step in the middle of the night.

If they do, there will be no questions asked.