A Morro Bay family is offering up all the money they earned from last weekend’s city-wide yard sale for the return of some family heirlooms that were accidentally left out and taken.
Monica and Deanna Richey sold furniture, decor, and appliances in front of their home on Juniper Avenue in Morro Bay.
“We made about $300,” Monica Richey said. “Just made enough to go to dinner.”
But by morning, they realized something special was missing.
“We ended up having some family heirloom Christmas decorations taken,” Deanna Richey said.
Off to the side of the home, under a tarp, the Richeys stowed four bins they had planned to move into storage.
“It was our Christmas bins, someone came and took them,” Monica Richey said.
Hours after the yard sale ended, surveillance video captured from a camera on a neighbor’s home shows two people stop by to browse the leftovers. They claimed the bins, which contain ornaments wrapped in Richey family photos, along with Christmas trinkets passed through generations.
“There are stockings I made for Monica’s dad before we even were married,” Deanna Richey said.
Both Monica and Deanna immediately recall the 5-foot-tall hand knit stocking that bears the name “Larry.”
Deanna joked that the stocking helped secure her marriage, laughing that her then-boyfriend was being courted by some other women.
“I thought that would be the icing on the cake and over 45 years later, it was,” Deanna said laughing.
But the stocking memory also brings on tears for the Richeys because Christmas 2018 was the last time Larry Richey would hang his own stocking.
“I just lost my dad the day after Christmas,” Monica Richey said.
Just four months after Larry Richey’s death, his wife and daughter now feel the added pain of losing physical reminders of his memory.
“It’s sad,” Deanna Richey said. “Just breaks your heart.”
“You just can’t get anything like that back,” Monica Richey said.
The Richeys hope that by sharing their story, they might receive an early Christmas miracle, one too precious to wear a price tag.
