No Ring of Fulfillment for an Old Man’s Dying Wish

Even today, more than a month after his grandfather died, it’s hard for Michael Hargett to discuss it without breaking up. He was close to the old man and drew the assignment of going to his mobile home in Anaheim and, knowing the end might be near, asking him how he wanted to be buried.

“Just throw me by the side of the road,” 80-year-old Hardy Norris joked to his grandson.

Norris was not one to stand on ceremony. “When people would ask me what religion he was,” Hargett says, “I’d tell them Jack Daniels and Pall Mall.”

When they finally got down to business, Norris had only request: that he be buried with his Masonic ring. “I thought, ‘That’s an easy request,’ ” Hargett says. “I said, ‘I’ll take care of it, Gramps. We’ll do that.’ ”

A few weeks later, on Dec. 20, Norris died in a Santa Ana nursing-care facility. Hargett was pleased with the treatment Norris had received during his 2 1/2 weeks there and felt that he and his sister, who had been helping care for him before he was admitted, had done right by their grandfather.

So, soon after being notified of his death, they asked the facility’s staff about the ring. Hargett says a nurse told his sister the ring would be removed from Norris at the facility, stored with his other items--such as books, a radio and clothing--and kept for them. “I didn’t even think it would come off his finger,” Hargett says. “I’m 31, and I’d never seen it off of him.”

Hargett arranged the burial through the county Social Services Agency and, because of a backlog, his grandfather’s body remained in the morgue. Several days after the death, Hargett made arrangements to pick up his grandfather’s possessions. That day, before he arrived, someone at the nursing facility telephoned to say the ring was missing.

“I was speechless,” Hargett says. “I couldn’t believe this was happening. I said, ‘Where is it?’ We specifically asked what would happen to it. She said she was sorry they couldn’t find it, but that they were willing to pay us $100.”

Hargett says a staffer at the facility--Care House of Santa Ana--said she saw the ring on Norris’s finger no more than an hour before he died. “That leads me to think someone stole it off him after he was dead,” Hargett says.

He contacted the Santa Ana Police Department and told them about the ring, probably worth no more than $50 at a pawnshop. Fat chance the cops would pursue that case, right?

Well, one did. Det. Rik Perez says he went out to Care House, snooped around, and has put in several hours so far on the case. I asked him why, given its negligible dollar value.

“It seemed like someone takes a ring from a deceased person, I felt like it has to be an inside job,” Perez says. He hoped that by focusing on the case, he might get someone to cough up a suspect or the ring itself.

“The request of a grandfather dying and wanting to take his property with him, someone might have feelings about that and come forward,” Perez says. “That’s what I’m reaching for. I know it’s a long reach. To tell you the truth, I felt compelled to do something. I don’t know why, but I did.”

Darlene Curry is the administrator at Care House and says it’s unfair to assume an employee was responsible. The hospital has 174 patients, a staff of 160, and people come and go at all hours.

“We have no way of knowing who [might have been involved] or how it disappeared,” she says. “I’m one that is very, very tough on [theft]. If I find out an employee was involved, and if we can prove it, I will take appropriate action. We investigated the situation very thoroughly. We talked to everyone that was involved at the time we think it disappeared, and we didn’t come up with anything concrete.”

Norris was cremated the first week of January. Today, 40 days after his grandfather’s death, Hargett still has the ashes in his garage.

Norris’ ashes will be buried in an urn in the Veteran Administration cemetery in Riverside, Hargett says. I asked why he hasn’t moved ahead with funeral services.

“What do you do when a grandparent tells you one simple thing? How can you just give up on that and not even try? It’s like I have to do it. I have no choice. I’m not going to say, ‘OK, I can’t do it, Grandpa, and I’m going to bury you without the ring.’ I’m going to hold out, I guess.”

If the police investigation turns up empty, Hargett says, he’ll start checking with area pawnshops to see if someone hocked it. “They probably got $50 for it,” Hargett says. “How could you take something off a dead person’s body for your own gain? To me, it killed me inside.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.