An Escondido widow is dealing with more heartache after the recent death of her husband.
Less than two months after Pete LaBozzetta's passing, a crook stole a prized possession that carries special memories for his wife, Brunie.
During their 37 years of marriage, Pete LaBozzetta was his wife’s guiding light down the freeway of love.
"Whenever we went out, I drove and he was like my co-pilot he was my GPS so to speak,” Brunie LaBozzetta said.
Heart and kidney issues took Pete LaBozzetta from his wife in February. During Brunie LaBozzetta's despair, her future daughter-in-law gave her a pendant with a green Peridot stone, signifying the month they were married.
But what was even more meaningful to Brunie LaBozzetta -- the pendant carried her husband’s ashes inside.
Brunie LaBozzetta hung the prized possession from the rearview mirror of her car, allowing her husband to always be her North Star.
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“I felt safe knowing a little part of him was there with me,” she said.
That sense of safety was shattered Saturday around noon when she realized something during her pre-drive ritual.
“I put my key in and I always go like this to say ‘Hey baby,” Brunie said motioning to the rearview mirror. "You know we're going to Michael’s and he wasn’t here.”
Brunie's rosary was left untouched. But her prized pendant along with her husband's disabled placard, which she planned on returning to the DMV, were both stolen overnight while her car was parked in the lot of her apartment on Borden Road.
“I never ever thought in my wildest dreams that something like my husband would be taken, it's just unbelievable,” Brunie said.
The car break-in put the brakes on the high school sweethearts' decades of riding together.
“It’s heartbreaking,” LaBozzetta said. “You know he's not guiding me anymore.”
LaBozzetta is hoping the suspect will see her story and turn in the pendant to police or leave it by her car.
