A PLEA FOR THE RETURN OF MAN'S STOLEN ASHES

Julia Wilkinson (left), of Charlotte, North Carolina, and her mother Mary Wilkinson (right) stand by as police officers (reflected in the window) discuss their investigation into items stolen from their rental car at the Anchorage Square parking lot in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, April 13, 2017. The ashes of Joe Wilkinson, the father and husband to Julia and Mary were among many things that were stolen. Melanie Woodrow (not pictured), a television reporter at abc7 called a police commander which instigated a police investigation. Julia Wilkinson had planned to look for her fathers remains in pawn shops in the Haight but instead met with police officers at the scene of the crime near Fisherman's Wharf.

Mary Wilkinson had planned to spend Thursday amid the majestic redwoods of the North Coast, scattering the ashes of her late husband on what would have been his 57th birthday.
Instead, the North Carolina resident and her daughter, Julia, were stuck in San Francisco and hoping for a miracle — that the burglar who looted the trunk of their rented Hyundai near Fisherman’s Wharf would be caught or at least would turn in the ashes after realizing they had mostly sentimental value.

“It’s so violating,” Mary Wilkinson said of Wednesday’s theft. The ashes belonged to Joseph Wilkinson, her husband of 31 years, who died of a heart attack in August. “I just can’t help feeling like I stomped on his memorial.”

The Wilkinsons’ nightmare marked yet another entry in a disturbing trend for San Francisco, which logged an average of 70 car break-ins a day in 2015. Though officials say they’re trying, the crime remains common, especially so at tourist hot spots like the wharf. An attendant at the Anchorage Square parking garage told Julia theirs was the third such break-in at the garage on Wednesday alone.

The mother and daughter spoke Thursday to police officials who heard about their plight after it was first reported by The Chronicle. They also learned that someone had tried to use a credit card stolen from the rental car to buy a Clipper card, the Bay Area’s all-in-one transit pass. And officers told Mary Wilkinson there was an effort to use her credit card at 7:18 p.m. Wednesday at a Ross store on Market Street, perhaps their best lead yet.

It wasn’t the West Coast trip they had envisioned when they flew in Wednesday morning from Charlotte. Julia had been excited to show her mother San Francisco, a city that she and her father loved but that Mary had never visited, before heading north to Redwood National Park near the Oregon border.

Before the car burglary, the two had planned to use their California trip to celebrate the life of a beloved father and husband and to find a measure of closure in scattering his ashes.

They had been robbed of the chance to say goodbye before Wilkinson’s sudden death on August 19. Mary Wilkinson had spoken to him on the phone only an hour before she came home to find that he had suffered a fatal heart attack. He had told her he felt like he was coming down with something and was going upstairs to lie down, she said.

“He had been running errands. He’d gone grocery shopping. There were still groceries on the counter. It was a normal day,” she said, dabbing away tears with a tissue.

“He died so young. He had so many bucket list items left,” her daughter said. “We wanted him to join us on this trip, in a way.”

On the flight, the ashes — enclosed in a metal scattering tube inside a velvet pouch — were tucked in Mary’s purse.

“That way he’ll be safe,” she recalled thinking.

The thieves who often target tourists’ rental cars near the waterfront had other plans. Only hours after the Wilkinsons landed, as they ate lunch near the wharf, somebody jimmied the trunk lock of their 2016 Hyundai Elantra in the garage at 500 Beach St.

When they returned, some of their bags were gone, along with the ashes. The car alarm, they said, was met with indifference by the parking attendant accustomed to the everyday noise.

“We parked in the garage because we thought it was safer than parking on the street,” Julia said. “I just hope my dad’s not in the trash somewhere.”

The company that runs the Anchorage Square garage did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The mother and daughter said they called San Francisco police after the theft but were told an officer could not respond to investigate and that they needed to file the report online. They called 311, then 911, where the operator and dispatcher both told the two they had no other option.

“I just really thought when I said my husband’s remains were taken, they would care,” Mary said, pacing outside the garage Thursday afternoon as officers wiped the car, which had been out in the rain the night before, for fingerprints.

Officer Robert Rueca, a department spokesman, said Thursday that he did not know who had spoken with the Wilkinsons. He said officers can and do respond to such calls for help, and that victims are not required to report crimes online. That wasn’t how it went Wednesday.

After multiple media inquiries into the theft, officials met Thursday with the mother and daughter. Rueca said officers were reviewing surveillance footage.

In the first three months of this year, police have recorded more than 6,400 cases of grand and petty theft from locked vehicles, according to the city’s online crime database. San Francisco made headlines when it logged 25,899 car break-ins in 2015.

This week, city Supervisor Norman Yee introduced legislation to cut down on vehicle burglaries near tourist hot spots by barring rental companies from putting ads on cars.

The mother and daughter said they planned to keep looking for the ashes before their planned flight home Tuesday. By Thursday afternoon, they were wondering what to do with themselves in the days ahead, as Julia in Haight-Ashbury started to slowly rebuild her $2,500 wardrobe that was now gone.

Julia remembered her father as a devoted family man who stayed up until wee hours helping her and her sister, Victoria, with every school project, and as a lover of Christmas and Halloween, when he would outfit their house with a fog machine, a witch’s cauldron and an organ-playing skeleton.

He loved pranks. When Julia went on her first date at 15, her father put on a Dracula cape and stood at the window flapping his arms as the boy parked in the driveway at the end of the night, she said. When his daughters had sleepovers, he insisted on buying all the favorite snacks of their visiting friends.

“He’d load the grocery cart up with Fruit Roll-Ups, Swiss Cakes, whatever their friends liked,” said his widow.

She first met him when he interviewed her for a job. It was, once again, his birthday — April 13, 1983.

As the mother and daughter waited for police to pick over the car back inside the garage Thursday afternoon, an officer excused himself.

“There’s another auto burglary right now up the street,” he said.

Chronicle staff writer Jenna Lyons contributed to this report.