Car prowler makes off with young girl's baby pictures; nurse pleads for their return



TACOMA, Wash. – A Pierce County nurse is desperate to find a stack of photos stolen during a recent car prowl.

The pictures are of a young child suffering from a life limiting disease – the child has no family of her own and the baby pictures are all she had that documented her past.

“I just can’t believe in an instant they were taken,” said LPN Kris Spencer. “I haven’t been able to tell her yet.”

Spencer said she left the photos in a duffel bag inside her work van, which was parked outside of her L Street home on Monday night. But she came outside the next morning to see the window shattered and the bag, including the photos, gone.

“I just, I lost it,” she said. “I walked into the house and the staff were like what’s wrong? I just told them the pictures of one of our kids were stolen.”

Spencer said the photos are of one of her young patients at Ashley House.

It’s a place where medically fragile kids dealing with catastrophic injuries and birth defects can heal in a place that feels more like home than a stuffy hospital room.

Spencer took the photos of the girl over the past 10 years and she planned to make a scrapbook for the girl.

“She always wants to hear a baby story,” said Spencer. “She always wants to see pictures. She wants memories because she doesn’t have anything she can look back at.”

Spencer said the young girl only has a handful of her own baby pictures left.

The nurse hopes whoever broke into the van will come forward and return the photographs.

“She just has a spirit that doesn’t stop,” Spencer said. “She’s very special.”

Spencer asks anyone with information to contact Ashley House.