SNOHOMISH — When her late husband’s special chair was stolen in the summer of 2010, Kris Raymond tried to convey its sentimental value to anyone who would listen.
“I just hope they have a conscience,” she told a reporter at the time.
It turned out the thief did, eventually.
Four years later, the Snohomish man made arrangements to have the chair, hand-carved in Africa, returned to Raymond. Soon after the theft, he’d learned that it was a precious symbol of the time, all too short, Raymond got to spend with her husband. Mike Goetz, a retired police officer, died of brain cancer in 2009 at the age of 53.
After they married in 2001, the couple marked their honeymoon by climbing 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest point. When he retired, they moved to Zimbabwe, where they owned a bed and breakfast and he became a safari guide.
A local craftsman they came to know carved chairs for each of them: leopards for Raymond, and one with a lion, leopard and cape buffalo for Goetz. The couple would sit in them side by side on their deck in Zimbabwe.
After his death, Raymond settled into a home at the end of a cul-de-sac in south Marysville.
She kept her husband’s chair on the front porch, never imagining someone might steal it.
Yet that’s what happened on a Saturday night in July 2010.
The next morning, Raymond got up to water the lawn and noticed that the chair’s usual spot on the front porch was empty.
She was devastated. Police took a report. She told her story to newspaper and television reporters.
Time passed. Raymond moved to Snohomish. Just in case, she reserved a spot for her husband’s chair, near hers, in the dining room.
Earlier this month, David Rose, a Q13 Fox News anchor and host of Washington’s Most Wanted, received a phone message from the man who stole the chair. The thief wanted to return it anonymously.
After checking with police and with Raymond, arrangements were made to do just that.
Raymond didn’t want to see the man prosecuted. She just wanted her chair back.
On Wednesday, Rose lugged the African hardwood up a flight of stairs.
“You got your chair back,” Rose told her. “We are just a medium.”
Raymond was delighted.
“I knew that chair would find its way home,” she said. “It was just meant to be. That’s the type of guy Mike was.”
The man who stole the chair said he has long felt the guilt of his actions. He is 37. He describes himself as a recovering methamphetamine addict who used to steal “anything not nailed down” from front porches. He’d been in Marysville that night in 2010 to score some drugs and ended up on Raymond’s doorstep between 1 and 3 a.m. He remembered hearing a dog bark before racing off.
He’d planned to give the chair away as a present, but friends wanted no part of it. They told him he was wrong to have it.
His guilt grew as he worked toward sobriety. The clearer his thoughts became, the harder it was to shove unpleasant memories to the back of his mind. The chair embodied the bad he had done.
He knew he had to return it.
“I wanted her to know it was hers again,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine her pain.”
Raymond heard his voice over a cellphone speaker Wednesday afternoon. She said she could feel the sorrow in his voice.
The way Raymond sees it, the chair might have done the thief some good.
“He got to know Mike in a way no one else would have,” she said. “Mike would give everybody a second chance. He is working his wonders even though he was not even here.”
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com
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