Thread by @MikeBennerKGW

Happy Saturday, friends. I'm on call this weekend and I've been tapped to work toinght. Before heading out on my story I wanted to recap my Friday night. I'm still in awe of what transpired. Let me walk you through it ..

My photographer @ottoiris and I were on two different stories that didn't pan out. We were frustrated to say the least. We thought we'd grab some dinner and hit the reset button ..

@ottoiris On our way to a sushi joint I was scanning twitter and noticed a story that @KGWNews had tweeted. The story was about a woman who had found an urn of ashes along East Burnside as she walked her dog ..

@ottoiris @KGWNews I thought to myself .. how nice of that woman to reach out to @KGWNews in an effort to find the rightful owner. I also thought how upset that rightful owner must be that the urn and ashes are missing ..

@ottoiris @KGWNews Since we had a blurb on our website already, I carred on with my evening. My photographer and I pulled up to a sushi restaurant at 181st and Glisan and parked our rig. As we were getting out of the car a guy was walking out of the Sprint store and approached us ...

@ottoiris @KGWNews The guy had a story 'we had to hear.' We get this a lot while in the field. Most of the stories are interesting but don't rise to the level of a news story. That said, we listend to the guy tell us what happened to him ..

@ottoiris @KGWNews He said about five days earlier he returned home from a month-long hunting trip. His house had been burglarized during the time he was gone. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff was stolen: a boat, a trailer, antiques, two heavy duty safes...

@ottoiris @KGWNews He was visibly upset about what happened. I was actually thinking to myself, maybe we have a story here. At the same time I thought it wasn't timely since he reported the burglary days earlier and the burglary itself happened before that ..

@ottoiris @KGWNews He continued to tell me the story and he was very upset. He said as much as he'd like everything back, there's only one thing he really wanted .. the urn that was inside one of the safes. It had his partner's ashes. She died in January..

@ottoiris @KGWNews I couldn't help but think about the story I had just read about minutes earlier. I asked the guy what color the urn was. He quickly replied purple. I was thinking to myself, there is NO way the urn that woman found Friday morning is the same urn stolen days or weeks earlier...

@ottoiris @KGWNews I pulled out my cell phone and showed him a picture of the urn and he screamed in delight. That was it!! As he's squealing in excitement I'm thinking, what are the odds? I read a story on our website one minute and bump into this stranger the next ...

@ottoiris @KGWNews I called the newsroom immediately and got the cell phone number for the woman who had contacted @KGWNews .. I called her and told her I think we may have found the owner of that urn ..

@ottoiris @KGWNews She was stoked and allowed me and my photog to come over and meet her. We escorted her to the home of the guy we had just met. She gave him the urn of ashes. They embraced and shared a cry ..

@ottoiris @KGWNews Talk about fate. Had my photographer & I ended up on one of the 1st two stories we were assigned we never would've stumbled into Kevin Mason. Had we hit 1 or 2 more stoplights we never would've met Kevin Mason.

@ottoiris @KGWNews Had I not seen the story about the urn I wouldn't have made the connection.. all the stars aligned and it made for quite the night ..

@ottoiris @KGWNews Below is a link to the story. We didn't have much time to put it together. Hope you enjoy ..

kgw.com/article/news/l…

@ottoiris @KGWNews If you know anything about the burglary you're urged to contact @GreshamPD .. there is still a lot of stuff missing.. though none of it as precious as the urn and ashes.