Urn left at Yorkville Goodwill Store

YORKVILLE - Many things find their way to Goodwill Stores—old cassettes, VHS tapes, bellbottoms but earlier this month Jenny Perkins said she came across something she had never seen before.

“It was an urn along with some pet remains,” Perkins, retail supervisor at the Goodwill in Yorkville, said. “It was hard to say exactly who it was or what it was, but we held onto it for a while in case somebody had realized—opps we donated this—and hoping they would come back and claim it.”

The white ceramic urn had some flowers painted on the side of it and Perkins said it could almost be confused for a vase. Donations to Goodwill are made anonymously, Perkins said, so whoever dropped off the urn went on their way before the staff found it.

“I want to believe that it was an accident because it kind of looks like a vase. They might not have known it was an urn,” she said. “The first thing you think of is—oh my gosh who donated their grandma?”

Perkins said she contacted the Kendall County Coroner’s office.

"That's not something that we want to hang on to, nor can you throw it out, nor can you spread it—that's not only a little disrespectful but against the law to spread ashes," she said.
Ken Toftoy, Kendall County Coroner, says it's the first time in his 23 years as coroner that someone dropped an urn off at Goodwill.

"We try to find the family and do the best we can. We just hang on to them," he said.
Jacquie Purcell, administrative deputy coroner for Kendall County, retrieved the urn and looked inside for a metal disc that would identify remains.

“If you look through the ashes inside an urn there’s always a metal disc and if you find that metal disc that metal disc will have the name of the crematory and a number. If you call the crematory and you give them that number they can tell you who it is,” she said.

The crematory was based in Virginia. Purcell said she found the woman’s obituary and saw that her name was Joyce Lovelace and she died in Virginia in 2006. A memorial service was scheduled in Illinois where the woman’s daughter had lived.

“I believe that her daughter had to move right away and probably left possessions behind and whoever came in and cleaned up behind her just threw all of her stuff in a box and just donated it,” Purcell said.

Purcell added that she couldn’t track the woman’s family who lived in Yorkville.

“I would rather think of this as an oversight than somebody just tossed off these cremated remains,” she said. “Somehow the ended up being in a box that got donated to Goodwill in Yorkville.”

Purcell searched a little more and said that she found the late woman’s brother who lived in Virginia. The family said they wanted the remains so Purcell mailed the remains back to the family in Virginia.

She packaged urn mailed it to the family from the post office.

“In fact, the U.S post office is the only one that will take (the remains) you can’t send it through FedEx, you can’t send it through UPS,” she said. “That’s kind of a feel good story.