CALGARY -- The ashes of a Calgary man's father disappeared in the night last week when his pickup truck was stolen from outside his Bowness home.
Christopher DesRoches keeps his father's ashes in the glovebox of his 1994 Ford F350 and scatters a bit of them when he feels the need.
"He comes on every adventure with me," DesRoches said. "He’s been everywhere, he’s been to Vancouver, he’s been up north, he’s been down south, he’s been across the country five, six times now."
But on Dec. 28, the ashes and the truck, along with his father's tools, went on an adventure without him when a thief took the locked truck from outside DesRoches' home at around 9 p.m.
DesRoches said he made a post to Facebook asking friends to be on the lookout, then hopped in his girlfriend's car and spent the entire night searching for his truck.
When the truck was first stolen, DesRoches said he felt sure he would get it back, but when morning rolled around, his confidence faded.
The Facebook post was shared more than 450 times overnight and popped up on the feed of a man nearly 300 kilometres away in the parking lot of the Golden, B.C. McDonald's.
"He was just scrolling through Facebook, looked down, saw my truck, looked up, saw my truck. Took a picture and sent it to me and it just went from there," DesRoches said.
RCMP were alerted and officers tracked the vehicle out of Golden. DesRoches said as soon as he heard the news, he hit the road to Golden to get his truck back.
He saw his truck again in a storage yard in Golden and he was elated to see the truck, along with his father's ashes and his father's tools, were all still there.
The only damage was a "minorly busted ignition" and empty fuel tanks.
