A Goodwill employee is attempting to track down whoever left an urn filled with ashes at one of the charity’s Georgia stores.
“Our motto in the military has always been this, ‘No soldier left behind,’” Andre Bess, who served in the US Army for 21 years, told Fox News.
The part-time employee in Peachtree Corners, about 22 miles outside of Atlanta, said a customer approached him in December 2023 and asked if something was supposed to be inside the urn in question. He responded: “No.”
He immediately told his superiors about the urn and said they were shocked but unsure of what to do. Some of his coworkers were allegedly willing to dispose of the ashes, he claimed. But, Bess told them he couldn’t do that.
“I told them I can’t do that because I have to find out who this belonged to,” he said. “I have a lot of soldiers that I worked with that died. Regardless of the flesh not being there, it’s still a human being, or it could be a pet.”
Since then, he’s been trying to reunite them with their owner in case they’d been left on accident.
A Goodwill spokesperson told the outlet it did not have a record of someone inquiring about the urn. On rare occasions, it does receive donations that include human remains.
The company does not track donations from donors but does have a policy of working with crematoriums to dispose of remains.
