LAS VEGAS, Nevada (KVVU) — Lori Bua lost her mother Billie Jean four years ago, and is left holding on to her memory with family photos and other mementos.
“We were very close. She was like my best friend,” said Bua.
But when most of those items were stolen from Bua’s storage unit last year, only a few of her mother’s possessions remained, including a special silverware set.
“It’s priceless, just the sentimental value of it,” she said. “And my mom really loved her set, and when we’d have dinners and stuff with her and my brother, and family would come over, we’d always use that set. So it was something that connected me to my mom.”
A few weeks ago, the silverware set was accidentally sold in a garage sale.
“It was almost like a panic, like oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just did this,” she said. “And then I just felt this hole in my stomach.”
Bua had a friend helping her bring some things out of storage to sell, but in the commotion of the busy garage sale, she didn’t realize the silverware had been put out.
“I was so rushed in the moment. There were a lot of people there, and I wasn’t realizing, ‘Oh, gosh, this is my mom’s silverware,’ at the time when I sold it, and then after it was sold, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I sold my mom’s silverware,’ and that was one of the few things I had after she passed away. So I was very upset that night,” Bua said. “Didn’t bring it in the house, and it was put outside, and it was sold. It was heartbreaking, and I cried for a day.”
Lori said it was a set of daily-use stainless steel silverware in a two-tier wallace wood case.
It sold for only $25, but to Bua, the set is priceless.
“It’s just silverware, but to me, it means a lot more than that,” she said. “I’d been meaning to bring the silverware into my house and incorporate it with my stuff, but life is so hectic, and I had cancer and had went through chemo, and a lot of things had happened that kind of put the brakes on the other things that you want to do.”
She put flyers around the neighborhood, begging for its return, and even offered compensation, hoping she can get the set back and carry on her mother’s tradition of family dinners using the same silverware in her memory.
