Tony and Teresa Scarcello had every intention of being generous with a recent clothing donation. But they wound up giving way more than they planned.
Like hundreds of others in Thunder Bay, the Northwood family was hit by the May 28 flood. While cleaning up, they decided to donate a bunch of clothing to Value Village around two months ago. But in the confusion of renovations and work of putting their home back together, the couple forgot they had hidden more than $15,000 worth of jewelry in the pocket of a ski jacket they inadvertently gave away.
Now they’re hoping a Good Samaritan will give it back.
“With everything going on over the summertime we just boxed things off and dropped them off. Now that we’re trying to piece everything back together it’s like ‘Oh my God we donated that jacket,” Tony Scarcello said Tuesday afternoon.
“It was by mistake. That wasn’t part of the donation by any means.”
Scarcello said the jewelry is all sentimental items and heirlooms. Most of the pieces are 18-karat Italian gold. This includes medallions from his children’s baptisms, a ring symbolizing the family of four with birthstones, and a ring from his deceased mother-in-law.
“Little things, but they’re worth a lot,” he said. “That’s really hitting home. It’s something that we wanted to keep to pass along to our kids.”
After discovering their costly mistake, the family returned to the Value Village outlet where they donated the clothing ,but didn’t find anything.
Store manager Chris Markall said it’s hard to find items with the amount of merchandise going through the store.
“With the thousands and thousands of pieces of merchandise that we do get we try and do the best we can to check all the pockets but sometimes things slip by,” he said.
If they’re notified within one or two weeks it’s more likely the staff can find something. But since the Scarcello family didn’t know what they’d given up until two weeks ago, it’s pretty hard to track the jacket down now.
“There’s not much in our hands we can do anymore,” he said.
Scarcello said they have put a notification on Kijiji and even had one reply from a woman saying she might know who has the jewels, which were in a green Mappins bag. It’s the only lead they have so far.
They’ve also called all the pawn shops in town.
The family is offering a $2,000 reward for the items to be returned.
“If they can return whatever they have left,” Scarcello said. “Maybe they haven’t worn it yet. Chances are the person knows they have this amount of jewelry in the pocket. It’s there. There’s no way they could miss it.”
“We were trying to help out others by donating these clothes and now we’re paying the price for it.”
Scarcello said his family has been emotionally drained since finding out that the jewels are missing. He is asking anyone with information to contact him by email.
