The pearl rosary flew to Krakow and was blessed by Pope Francis.
For years, it rode in the car with Sally Heasty and into the pews at St. Michael, a cherished wedding gift from her Grandma Lucy.
Sometimes, the hospice nurse and mother of three stowed it in her nightstand. Sometimes she stuck it in her purse.
That’s where it was last August when she parked at the Walton trailhead to walk the MoPac with a friend.
Heasty’s window was broken when she returned an hour later, and her purse gone.
At first, she didn’t realize the rosary was gone, too, and then she checked her nightstand drawer.
“My grandmother gave me that rosary in my wedding bouquet,†Heasty said Tuesday. “It was the only thing in that purse I cared about.â€
People are also reading…
* * *
Katy and Jim Cummins live east of Lincoln on a street called Pebble Beach.
They like to walk around Crooked Creek, the nearby golf course.
They like to walk so much the couple adopted a stretch of O Street and pick up trash as they go.
Bottles and pop cans and fast-food containers mostly.
But a few weeks ago, they spotted something out of the ordinary on the side of the road.
It looked like a dead animal.
Jim Cummins peered closer. A soiled gray leather purse.
“It was ant-infested and rained on and snowed on,†Katy Cummins said.
Yuck.
Jim gingerly picked up the purse and they kept walking.
When they got home, Katy peered inside. A few credit cards, a driver’s license, a work badge from Tabitha. And a pearl rosary, tucked inside a small plastic container.
“It was a beautiful rosary,†she said. “I knew whoever it belonged to, they wanted this rosary back.â€
The retired telephone company worker started looking on social media. She found a Sally Heasty on Facebook and saw she had a connection to Pius X. She called her great-niece, who went to school there: Did she know any Heastys?
She did.
Cummins figured she’d found the rosary’s owner.
She had an address from the found driver’s license, but she didn’t want to leave the purse on a porch and have it stolen all over again, so she called Tabitha.
The receptionist gave her a contact number and she left a message.
“I waited about a week. No answer.â€
* * *
After her purse was stolen, Heasty and her husband, Scott, started searching for it.
Her phone had been in the car and it was pinging all over town.
It pinged at 17th and Superior, so the couple walked through bushes and searched through trash cans.
It pinged near Folsom Street, so they scoured the grounds around Lincoln Industries and Willard Community Center.
“The deputy who helped me said the phone and the purse are probably not together,†Heasty said. “But I think I always had hope someone would find it.â€
Her grandma Lucy Obeurreuter was a woman of faith. She’d purchased the rosary as a surprise wedding gift in 1998 and had it tucked inside Heasty’s bridal bouquet.
Heasty has a dozen or more rosaries, but this one was special.
It was the rosary she took across the ocean two years ago when she accompanied her daughter, Morgan, and thousands of young Nebraska Catholics to World Youth Day.
The rosary she held aloft for Pope Francis to bless during an outdoor papal Mass with the pilgrims on the last day.
Heasty took the rosary to Auschwitz and the cell of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a friar who traded places with a stranger in the camp and died there. She took it to visit the convent of St. Faustina, a nun who had visions of Christ and his mercy.
“Krakow, Poland, is for Catholics a mecca for saints,†Heasty said. “I came back just changed.â€
Late last week, the family headed off to Colorado for vacation.
Heasty had her Tabitha cellphone with her, but she wasn’t working so she didn’t check it often.
When she finally did, she saw a missed call from the Tabitha operator.
And another number she didn’t recognize — and a voicemail.
She listened to a message from Katy Cummins.
“I just started weeping in the car.â€
* * *
Heasty got home Monday night.
She made plans to meet Jim and Katy Cummins at their home Tuesday, thankful for their searching eyes.
She made plans to call the deputy who helped her search for her lost rosary.
“I think I’m going to take it directly to St. Michael’s adoration chapel and pray and cry the whole time.â€