Misdelivered urn will be returned to rightful owner

SHELTON, Wash. -- A misdelivered urn has created an unusual bond between a Shelton woman and the rightful owner of the remains.

When Karen Smith accepted a package from the U.S. Postal Service last week, she expected it to be an "as seen on TV" product she and her family recently ordered.

When she opened the box, she got a surprise she'll never forget.

In addition to the item she ordered, the box contained a red pouch, dog tags and an urn.

"And I read 'dad' and the dates on it," Smith said. "I thought, oh my god."

The "dad" listed on the package is Randal Irwin, a Vietnam veteran and geologist from outside San Diego.

Irwin's daughter, Carole Irwin, was sending the ashes to her brother in the Pacific Northwest, but a mix-up at the post office brought the package to Shelton.

"Well, I guess he wanted to go see Seattle," Smith said.

Before the urn arrived at Smith's house, it was repackaged at the Federal Way Post Office Processing Center. When a package is damaged in shipping, as Smith's was, USPS re-wraps the damaged item and puts it in a new box.

USPS's Ernie Swanson said no one at the Federal Way office remembers seeing the red pouch come through, but he suspects the urn was sitting close to the Smith's broken white box and was mistakenly put inside.

"Chances are-the person that handled it didn't realize he or she had human remains," Swanson said. "Whoever handled them, for whatever reason, put them both in one box and sent them to the customer in Shelton."

Smith said she's shocked that something so precious was handled so carelessly.

"Treat it with respect just like you would treat anything else with respect," she said.

For her part, Carole Irwin said she doesn't hold a grudge and is amazed at the new connection she's made in the most unlikely way.

"I'm just so fortunate that it got into the right hands and if it was anybody else they could have just been, 'oh what's this, it's not mine, I'm just going to go throw it away,' but this person really took the effort and time to really figure out where this came from," Irwin said.

To be safe, Smith said she's going to drive the remains to Irwin's son in Oregon.

"I just want to make sure that he gets home," she said.