Traveler helps woman find lost bracelet with mother’s ashes
Evelyn Tarango was resolute in her determination to return to the Arizona desert town of Sedona, a place where its warmth and sunshine felt most like home. Weeks after the Illinois woman’s death, that wish will be obliged, in part thanks to a series of fortuitous events last week at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport.
After Tarango died on Christmas Eve, her daughter, Shara Fisher, had a bracelet made containing her ashes and inscribed with her thumbprint over a silver heart charm. Fisher realized she’d lost it while traveling recently to see her own daughter in the Montgomery County community of Porter.
It would be a woman traveling from Arizona and visiting relatives who spotted the bracelet at the Houston airport. The traveler posted the find on social media Jan. 29, hoping to connect with the owner. On Wednesday, Fisher learned about the post.
Fisher now plans to meet the woman in Arizona, where she will be reunited with the piece of her mother she thought she had lost forever. Fisher said she will take the bracelet to Sedona to honor Tarango’s desire.
“My mother was always a very determined person,” Fisher said. “She was determined to get there one way or another.”
Desiree Encinas knew when she found the bracelet that it had
deep meaning and was invaluable to someone’s loved one. Encinas, who works in administering chemotherapy to cancer patients, found the jewelry the night of Jan. 28 in a bathroom at Terminal 2 of the airport.
“I know that items like that can hold high sentimental value,” she said.
Since the lost-and-found kiosk of the airport was closed at the time, Encinas decided to hold onto the bracelet and try to find the owner herself. Her sisters, whom she visited in Texas, convinced Encinas to post the bracelet to social media.
“Within maybe two hours, there were more than 3,000 shares and I got super excited,” she said.
The post would go on to be shared more than 228,000 times. There were hundreds of comments from people sharing their prayers and hope for the item to return to its owner. News outlets picked up the story, pushing the post’s reach even further.
The strategy worked. Amber Crabtree, Fisher’s daughter, saw a news story about the bracelet on social media while she was on the phone with her mother Wednesday.
“I started crying, and I told (my mom) that someone found it,” Crabtree said. “She started crying, too.”
The two had looked furiously for the bracelet at Crabtree’s home and in the car Fisher rented. After Fisher left, she kept calling the car rental company and the airport in case it had turned up.
The bracelet was especially meaningful to Fisher because she had experienced several losses in the past year. Her father died in July, and a cousin died shortly after. Tarango and Fisher were very close, the daughter said. They lived together, and Fisher cared for her for three years.
“I wanted her with me always,” Fisher said. “The bracelet was a fitting way to do that.”
Fisher said she feels fortunate in more than one way that Encinas was the person who found the bracelet. Encinas said she took great care with the jewelry, speaking to it and reassuring it every day that it would be found. It was also a blessing the person who found it lived in Arizona, Fisher said.
Tarango, who raised her children in Sedona, told her daughter she longed for the desert climate during cold Illinois winters and begged her daughter to take her back out west. The family had a trip planned last year, but the woman’s health and the spread of COVID-19 forced them to reconsider.
“In the last few weeks of her life when things started to go downhill for her, she said that she wanted me to spread her ashes in Sedona,” Fisher said.
She said the thousands of comments and shares on social media, which she said ultimately made it possible for her to find the bracelet, renewed her faith in humanity.
“I’m grateful for the shares and prayers on social media,” she said. “It’s nice, especially during a time when social media can be such a negative place to be. This is a reminder that there’s still good people out there.”
Fisher also said she felt a sense of peace believing that the ordeal and its conclusion were a sign from Tarango that everything would be OK.
“Today’s my birthday,” Fisher said Thursday. “All of this unfolded last night. It’s the best gift I’ve ever had.”