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DENVER (KDVR) — A family is pleading for the community’s help after their car was stolen with centuries-old family heirlooms inside honoring their American Indian tribal culture.

The car, stolen from Jan Jacobs’ southeast Park Hill driveway Monday night is a 2014 baby blue Honda CRV with the Colorado license plate 988-WET. 

Having just returned from Oklahoma for their Osage tribe’s I’nlonshka ceremonial dances, Jacobs had suitcases with her family’s traditional Osage clothes in the trunk of her car. Many of these heirlooms have been passed down through generations, including an eagle wing fan that belonged to their great uncle Harold Redcorn and a fan gifted to Jacobs’ mother by her own grandfather. 

Jacobs’ mother, a master ribbon-worker who passed away in 1986, handmade all of the men’s outfits and the women’s and girl’s skirts that were taken.

“When she passed I was very young,” Jacobs’ son Ben said. “As someone that was a grandma’s boy, to be able to have that and to wear that, that’s the essence of her that I get to carry on. It’s a, it’s a gift, not only of what you get to wear, but where you come from and who you are and who you represent.”

“I think they just wanted a car and wanted transportation and no idea of the repercussions of their act of how it will impact my family,” Jacobs said. 

The Jacobs’ aren’t concerned about getting the car itself back, they are pleading for the community’s help to find the fabric of their family’s culture.

“We can get my mom another car, it doesn’t matter, she can have my car,” Ben said. “But I want her stuff back. I want my grandma’s stuff back. I want my children and my children’s children to have it the way it’s intended, not to just end up in someone’s shop or someone’s house or some dumpster over a car.”

These items were in vintage brown and blue hard-sided Samsonite suitcases, a plastic bin, and the eagle feathers are in special cedar boxes.

The Jacobs family is offering a $5,000 reward to get their irreplaceable heirlooms back. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (720) 913-7867.