DENVER (KDVR) — A bizarre theft at a storage facility has left a military veteran devastated.
Veteran combat medic El Scipione lost her father Robert “Bob” Scipione, a respected biochemist and artist who spoke four languages, just before his 84th birthday to COVID-19.
“He was just an amazing person and I miss him every single moment of the day,” she said.
Thieves broke into the storage facility near Galena Street and Alameda Avenue on Sept. 7 taking heirlooms, including her father’s cultural collection, and a gray bag with a red ribbon she tied on it when she was 4 years old. Her father had been keeping the memento ever since.
“The things that he owned embraced our heritage, our Italian background,” she said.
Scipione’s mother’s ashes were left behind.
“I didn’t know how I was going to put my mother to rest without my father,” she said.
The family is devastated by the theft and hopes the heirlooms will be left at a location where someone might return them. FOX31 learned the ashes were later left at a funeral home, but Scipione remains heartbroken.
“It was a journey I didn’t want him to go on, I didn’t know these people, they didn’t know my father, it showed me such a lack of respect,” she said.
Anyone with information should contact Denver Police Department.