A 75-year-old woman in East L.A. thought she was helping out a stranger. Instead, her family says, thieves drove off with a gold necklace that was priceless to her because it carried the ashes of her late daughter. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was crying hysterically, saying, \u2018They stole my chain, they stole my chain!\u2019\u201d said Jesse Guerrero, 57, the woman\u2019s son. <\/p>\n
The incident occurred on Dec. 15 after Esther Guerrero and her husband returned to their home in the 300 block of Gerhart Avenue after a shopping trip to downtown L.A. <\/p>\n
Guerrero had just stopped to let her husband out and was making her way to the back of her Ford Explorer to grab her bags when she noticed a white car drive past and then reverse back toward her SUV.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Esther Guerrero holds a portrait of her late daughter, Veronika Garcia, a retired deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department who died May 3 in a car crash in Idaho.<\/p>\n
(KTLA)<\/p>\n
Jesse Guerrero said the people in the white car called his mother over and said, \u201cMy mom\u2019s really sick, do you know if there\u2019s a pharmacy nearby?\u201d <\/p>\n
Guerrero\u2019s mother walked toward the window of the car to give them directions. Inside she saw two women and a young child, he said. She also noticed a knife near the center console and decided to move away from the car. <\/p>\n
But Guerrero said a woman who was sitting in the backseat kept talking to his mother and got out of the car, saying she wanted to thank her for the directions. <\/p>\n
He said the woman offered his mother money.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom, she tried to push her away and said, \u2018No, I don\u2019t need anything,\u2019\u201d Guerrero said. <\/p>\n
But the woman insisted, offered to give his mom a chain and tried to put it around her neck. Guerrero said his mother resisted and refused the chain. The woman then hugged his mother. <\/p>\n
At some point, Guerrero said, the woman took his mother\u2019s gold necklace and golden cross from her and left a cheap chain hanging around her neck. The woman hurried back inside the car and drove away. <\/p>\n
His mother said that \u201cas they sped away, she noticed it was gone,\u201d Guerrero said. <\/p>\n
Jesse Guerrero lives across the street from his parents and said he was driving north on Gerhart Avenue soon after the theft when he saw his mother on the street, crying. <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t the lost necklace that sparked her despair, he said, but the gold cross, which carried the ashes of Esther Guerrero\u2019s daughter. <\/p>\n
Veronika Garcia, a retired deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department, died May 3 in a car crash in Idaho. After her death, Jesse Guerrero said, Garcia\u2019s husband gifted her parents with two identical gold necklaces with a cross.<\/p>\n
The golden cross has two distinct wings making up its horizontal part, he said, and carry some of Garcia\u2019s ashes inside. <\/p>\n
He said his mother had worn and kept that cross with her since it was given to her. <\/p>\n
His mother told him the white car, which appeared to be an Audi, drove toward Beverly Boulevard. Guerrero continued to drive, looking for the car, but was unable to locate it.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s driven around the area these past days with his mother, hoping to recognize the women who took the cross from her. Guerrero also has visited pawn shops, hoping to find it. <\/p>\n
In the past week, he said, he and his siblings have been trying to keep his mother busy with Christmas preparations. She\u2019s been heartbroken by the theft, he said, and they\u2019re trying to keep her from dwelling on it. <\/p>\n
Detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department have been assigned to the case, and Guerrero said he\u2019d also reached out to other police departments about similar incidents. Still, they\u2019ve had no luck. <\/p>\n
Now, he said, he and his family are making a public plea and asking the people who took the necklace to return the cross. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hoping they throw it on the grass, toss it on the porch, or put it in the mailbox, whatever it is,\u201d he said. \u201cAs my mom said \u2014 \u2018All I need is the cross, forget the chain. I just need the cross.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 75-year-old woman in East L.A. thought she was helping out a stranger. Instead, her family says, thieves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[57862,283,3163,9342,24746,57859,57860,57866,4264,57863,57861,38353,48,52,51,47,50,49,6316,57864,57865],"class_list":["post-107362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ashe","tag-car","tag-chain","tag-daughter","tag-east-l-a","tag-esther-guerrero","tag-gold-cross","tag-gold-necklace","tag-husband","tag-jesse-guerrero","tag-l-a-mom","tag-l-a-woman","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mother","tag-necklace","tag-veronika-garcia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}