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SANDY – Mandy Draney pulled into Larkin Sunset Gardens Cemetery for her cousin's burial service on Saturday afternoon.
She returned to her car just 20 minutes later, only to find that all of her belongings were gone.
"I was just frantic, and I was like 'my bag's gone. Someone stole my bag,'" Draney, of American Fork, said.
As a flight attendant for JetBlue, Draney was scheduled to fly to New York shortly after the funeral.
"I had everything in my car. Everything," she said. "My JetBlue ID, my passport, my FAA card ... my JetBlue-issued iPad. I mean everything was in this bag. And it was gone."
While she's normally extremely careful about locking her car, as she was surrounded by mourning family members, that detail slipped her mind.
"Being in a cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah, was the last place that I thought this would ever happen to me," she said.
Her money already spent
Within minutes of reporting the theft to police, Draney said she was receiving texts that her cards were being used. The perpetrators spent her money at Target, Walgreens and Foot Locker.
"Within 20 minutes they had already spent over $3,000," she said.
The cemetery, located at 1950 E. 10600 South, didn't have security cameras by where Draney parked, but the cashiers at the stores described the thieves as two female adults, one with a black puffy coat, black heels and tattoos on her face.
Draney has been working closely with police for the past 24 hours and is hopeful they can track everything down.
"It's ridiculous what I'm going to have to go through to replace all of this," she said.
Sadly, even in a place like a cemetery, we've got to be vigilant about our surroundings. I learned that the hard way.
–Mandy Draney
For now, she has a message for others: you can never be too cautious.
"Lock your doors. Don't leave anything in sight," she said. "And sadly, even in a place like a cemetery, we've got to be vigilant about our surroundings. I learned that the hard way."
Larkin Sunset Gardens and the Sandy Police Department said they did not receive any other reports of burglaries at the cemetery yesterday.
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Emma Benson
