Family decries "betrayal of trust" by Colorado funeral home
Yong Anderson was 76. Among the Colorado woman's final wishes were to have her ashes released in the ocean off Hawaii where she once lived.
"She loved it there. She lived her best life there," said her daughter Tanya Wilson.
Her mother had come to live in Colorado in recent years with Tanya's brother Jessie Elliot in Woodland Park near Colorado Springs. He helped care for her after a stroke years ago took her down a notch. More health problems followed. She passed away in early June.
"She was always the one that wanted to take care of everybody else. And she couldn't stand it that she had to be taken care of," said Tanya Wilson. "But she was always a fighter, all the way until the very end."
The family chose the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, liking their concepts of a more green burial.
"When they showed up to pick her up, they seemed respectful," said Wilson.
But soon after her brother who had handled a lot of the arrangements began to be troubled by some of apparent inaction on the part of the funeral home. It look longer than planned. Then there were explanations that delays were caused by a move of the funeral home. Then when he wanted to pick up her remains the paperwork wasn't right to complete the cremation one day. The next day everything was suddenly done. But when they called to get the remains, one of the owners, Carie Hallford, told them not to come pick them up.
"She said that they were in the middle of changing locations and she could either deliver them to Woodland Park or they could coordinate for a place to meet. Which I thought was also strange," said Wilson.
Now they look like red flags after the discovery of improperly stored bodies in a funeral home facility in Penrose, jammed into a building of about 2,500 square feet.
"This is the worst betrayal of trust," said Wilson.
The owners of Return to Nature were in financial trouble and no longer were working with the crematory that supposedly cremated their mother's remains.
"We already know that Wilbert Crematory did not cremate our mother. We didn't receive all the tags and the certificate that normally accompany cremation," Wilson added.
There were no tags with the remains they received. A request to the funeral home for them was met with a reply that they would be mailed. None were, said Jessie Elliot. Tanya took some of what they received and asked a funeral home in Georgia where she lives if it looked right. They told her it was not consistent with what they've seen. She and her daughter compared it with cement from bags at a hardware store. It looked identical.
This week, investigators upped the number of bodies found at the funeral home's facility in Penrose to 189. There may be more say investigators as the identities of the bodies are determined.
Her family has spoken with investigators and now waits to find out if Yong Anderson's body was there.
"I think at this point we hope that she is, because otherwise we'll never know," said Wilson.
Investigators arrived at the Penrose building after complaints about odor. Return to Nature had financial problems and was sued by the company that had been doing cremations in the past. It had since stopped. The Associated Press reports it had missed recent tax payments and was evicted from one prior property. It was all unknown by Yong Anderson's family.
"We are not in any position to be able to recognize what is wrong and what's not," Wilson said.
Colorado has some of the weaker funeral home regulation in the country. That includes a lack of qualification requirements for funeral home operators.
"The lack of oversight and the lack of regulation there in Colorado it just makes me sick to my stomach that this just happened," said Wilson.
While the state began to allow unannounced inspections last year, it did not provide money to do so. There's no indication that regulators visited the funeral home within 10 months after the funeral home's registration expired.
"There were no true consequences. And definitely not enough oversight," said Wilson.
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