COURT HOUSE – This Christmas will be Kathryn Hinchey-Wise’s first without her beloved grandmother, who died earlier this year. That in-and-of-itself will be difficult, but to make matters even worse, the valuable holiday ornaments and decorations her grandmother lovingly saved over the years and passed on to her granddaughter, are also gone.
Hinchey-Wise was using a storage unit in Court House to temporarily store her grandmother’s holiday decorations. When she and her wife went to the unit recently to move them to their new home, they found their unit trashed, with only tissue paper remaining, as each glass ornament had been unwrapped and taken. Lenox china boxes, each labeled with the year they were bought, were left behind empty, as well.
“The holiday decorations that my grandmother had were something that she worked really hard for over the years,” Hinchey-Wise said. “She grew up in South Seaville on a farm as the oldest of the 14 Cowan kids, and they definitely didn’t have a lot of discretionary income, especially not for things like Christmas decorations.
“My grandmother loved to make Christmas special and had a tree that was a collection of sentimental ornaments made by her grandchildren, ornaments bought on her travels or gifted to her by family members, and a collection of Lenox porcelain ornaments,” she added. “As my wife and I carefully packed the ornaments back into their boxes after our last Christmas together, each box was marked with the year they were bought. My grandmother explained where they came from, why they were special to her, and the hopes and dreams she had as Celeste and I started our family together.”
“I’d hoped to put up the tree for the first time in my own apartment,” Hinchey-Wise added. “I feel incredibly grateful for the 30-plus years I got to spend with her and her beautiful holiday magic. She would spend days making sure that all of her decorations were just so, but most important of all was a Christmas tree, which would be the centerpiece for our annual family portraits until 2013 when my grandmother had to downsize, and she sold her home.”
According to a police report filed with the Middle Township Police Department, the items were reported missing Nov. 14, but they could’ve been taken over a several-month period. The ornaments and assorted other family items reportedly have a value of $26,000, according to the police. Because of the high value, the case is being investigated by the Major Crimes Unit.
Hinchey-Wise thought the storage units had cameras on the property but said they apparently have one camera that faces the front. There is a keypad at the locked entrance gate, which is entered from the outside by a customer’s personal identification number (PIN).
“If someone is leaving, the gate will open for them and other people can get in,” she pointed out. “I’m really upset that people keep suggesting that I, in some way, brought this upon myself, when no one knew that I had stored them and certainly did not know the location of my unit.
“If someone was watching us while we were loading things into our storage unit, it’s possible that they scouted and then took them,” she said. “Our unit had a lock with a PIN that only my wife and I had the combo to. If I am late on payments, which I wasn’t, even I am not able to access my storage unit, so it would not have been easy to get in. The cruelty of this stranger just happens to be happening at the same time as my grandmother’s passing.”
Hinchey-Wise added, “No one knew that the ornaments were in a storage unit and there’s only one other person in my family who needed a Christmas tree, and she has her own full set of Lenox ornaments. We think the person must’ve thought they were stealing from a store because there was a dress form and a box of beautiful dresses and gowns in the storage unit. They tossed the entire unit, however, and if they had known who we were or what they were looking for, they wouldn’t have had to since the boxes were at the very front of the unit.”
Hinchey-Wise said the ornaments could be “anywhere” by now, including pawn shops or being sold online. She set up a website, savegrandmomgirlstree.com, which lists the ornaments, dresses and other family heirlooms stored in the unit. They can be returned to PO Box 688, Cape May Court House, NJ 08210.
Middle Township police are also investigating pawn shops and secondhand shops.
Among the missing items was a green wreath holder that Hinchey-Wise soldered as a tinsmith at Cold Spring Village when she was 13, a pair of plastic snow people kissing each other on a little bench as a salt and pepper shaker set that belonged to her great-great-grandmother, and 50- 100 glass, metal, porcelain, and porcelain-tipped-with-24-karat-gold Christmas tree ornaments.
“My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer last December and died Feb. 12,” Hinchey-Wise said. “That last Christmas, we sat and looked at a beautiful tree that sparkled, listened to music together, and spent precious time making our final magical holiday memories. Please, if you know anything, and you can get these back to us, it would be so appreciated.”
To contact Karen Knight, email kknight@cmcherald.com.
