'Do The Right Thing': Son Pleads For Father's Ashes To Be Returned

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) - A son planning to spread his father's ashes in Colorado still hopes he can find the stolen package shipped to him home a month ago. It contained an urn and other personal items.

"My stomach sank at that point," Austin Barker said when he realized the package was stolen.

He had been out of town when his cousin's delivery of his father's ashes and other belongings arrived at his house. Barker's neighbor was also not home at the time, so the package could have been on the front steps for days without anyone taking it inside.

Now his family hopes they can at least find out what happened to the ashes, if not retrieve them from the person who stole the package.

"Just anything for me and my family to have something, some idea of where he went," he said.

It has been a month since the ashes were shipped but they still have hope someone will come forward. His father planned to move to Colorado to be closer to Barker. He had his eyes set out on Durango.

After Barker's parents divorced at a young age, he moved to Colorado and his father headed to the east coast. They reconnected eight years ago when his father found him on Facebook. They got the chance to meet again in Boston years after that.

"We had more in common than we thought, he loved photography, I love painting as well as photography," Barker said. "Even though years away from each other, we still felt we had this bond together."

But shortly after they began to make up for the time they missed apart, he received devastating news about his father.

"It was definitely world shattering when a year later he contacted me and told me he had been diagnosed with stage four bladder cancer," Barker said.

His father passed away just before Christmas last year. Barker tried to see him one last time but missed him before his dad died.

"I hope that people could look inside themselves and understand the situation is horrible, and it was a mistake on many different levels," he said.

Barker planned to take his father's ashes on a hike at Windom Peak overlooking Durango to give him a final resting place. He may still do the hike in his father's honor without the ashes this summer.

"We all make mistakes, just do the right thing and get it out there," he said.

If you have any information that could help the family get answers, contact Fort Collins Police or the post office. Barker believes there is still a chance he will get to give his father the send off they originally planned on in Colorado.

"I'm still hopeful something will come out of it," he said. "There's enough people out there that something will come to light."