{"id":587669,"date":"2026-08-09T05:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T05:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/587669\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T05:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T05:36:10","slug":"grieving-parents-make-public-plea-for-return-of-priceless-statue-to-miami-lakes-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/587669\/","title":{"rendered":"Grieving parents make public plea for return of \u2018priceless\u2019 statue to Miami Lakes park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0August 8, 2026 at 10:55 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Updated:\u00a0August 8, 2026 at 11:33 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">MIAMI LAKES, Fla.  \u2014 The statue of 5-year-old Jake \u201cJakey\u201d Duque recently vanished. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Jakey\u2019s grieving parents, Karen and Orlando Duque, were pleading on Saturday that it be returned to the Jakey Duque Park in Miami Lakes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s priceless to us,\u201d Karen Duque said about the sculpture crafted by Art &amp; Sculpture Unlimited. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Jakey was 4 years old when he was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, a rare and highly aggressive brain tumor Oct. 11, 2019. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Jakey died on June 8, 2020. City officials unveiled the tribute, as part of a community effort, on May 8, 2021, at Northwest 154th Street and 89 Avenue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cIt means a lot to the community,\u201d Orlando Duque said. \u201cIt means a lot to us, and we just would like it back &#8230; If they want to come dead of night like they took it and drop it off that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Karen Duque said they don\u2019t want to press any charges. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe just want for it to be returned,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Related report<\/p>\n<p>Thieves steal statue honoring beloved boy in Miami Lakes  <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Aaron Maybin\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/b1f0fdcc-a947-4d3e-8210-.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Aaron Maybin<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Aaron came to Local 10 from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he worked as a weekend morning anchor and reporter at WITI-TV.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Andrea Torres\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/83a8effa-fc87-4940-96.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Andrea Torres<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">The Emmy Award-winning journalist joined the Local 10 News team in 2013. She wrote for the Miami Herald for more than 9 years and won a Green Eyeshade Award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0August 8, 2026 at 10:55 PM Updated:\u00a0August 8, 2026 at 11:33 PM MIAMI LAKES, Fla. \u2014 The statue&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-587669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}