When you lose a loved one, you expect their remains to be handled with care and respect, but one family in Kirkland said that was not their experience at a cemetery run by the city of Kirkland.
"It is unbelievable it is," said Suzie Young as she walked to the memorial wall containing her parents ashes at the Kirkland Cemetery.
Young and her siblings lost both of their parents within about two years of each other.
"We've had a bit, we've had a few deaths," Young said. "Dad died suddenly of a heart attack and mom died of a neurological disease."
Young and her siblings wanted their parents, Robert and Linda Vaughn, cremated, and buried side by side at the Kirkland Cemetery.
It was a decision they had no idea would lead to so much heartache.
"We were here to celebrate Linda. We were putting her together with Bob," said Kathleen Baty, Young's cousin. "That was the idea and it just we didn't even have that moment, that moment was taken from us."
The trouble started at Mr. Vaughn's funeral in February 2013.
His family paid for his ashes to be placed inside a niche they'd chosen on the grassy side of a memorial wall.
When the family arrived at the cemetery, he wasn't in that spot at all. The cemetery staff had put him in the wrong place, on the opposite side of the wall.
Young and her family said they requested Mr. Vaughn be moved to the niche they had purchased.
About seven months later, the cemetery moved Mr. Vaughn to the correct location.
In the spring of 2015, the family came to visit and say they found their dad, still on the correct side of the wall but in a different niche, again. The city has no record indicating he was ever in that location.
Then, in November 2015, when the family returned for their mother's funeral, they found both of their parents back on the wrong side of the memorial wall in an entirely new niche.
"It was almost like a joke," Young said.
"We got a black sharpie and wrote their names on their boxes so we would know it was them," Baty said.
Frustrated, Baty even videotaped some of the confusion during what was supposed to be a ceremony for Mrs. Vaughn.
"She's here right now," said the cemetery worker in the video.
"Yeah that's great but that's not where they wanted to be," commented a relative.
The video shows the staff worker tried to solve the problem by moving the Vaughns yet again, this time to a different memorial wall.
"Is there a chance they might get moved from here?" asked one of Young's relatives.
"This is serious stuff. You don't just move people's remains willy nilly," Baty said.
Ultimately, the Vaughns were relocated again to the correct Niche.
The family estimates Mr. Vaughn's ashes were moved around five times in about two years.
Washington state law RCW 68.50.200 prohibits removing human remains without written permission from a surviving spouse or relative. It adds that if written permission can't be obtained, the cemetery should obtain permission from the county superior court.
The family said the city never sought their permission to move the Vaughns' remains outside of the time they requested Mr. Vaughn be moved back to the niche they had purchased.
Jay Gewin, Kirkland customer accounts supervisor, oversees the cemetery.
"I think it happened because the city made two key errors that we deeply regret," Gewin said.
Gewin admits staff never should have moved the Vaughns without permission but he said the root of the problem was in the city's paperwork, which led to confusion about where the Vaughns belonged.
"I have never seen forms that have been marked up as these," Gewin said.
Internal e-mails reading "urn is in the wrong site" show the city knew they made a mistake two years ago but never fully corrected the error in their database.
The city's cemetery check list, a document used to prevent errors, lists five possible locations for the Vaughns.
It's also incomplete and uses hash marks where initials and dates should be.
The family's purchase agreement and deed don't match. Each indicates the Vaughns should be somewhere else.
Both documents also have information crossed out and altered by hand with no indication of who made the change and if it was authorized.
"Rather than pointing fingers, the city has admitted our error we made mistakes we deeply regret. We want to make it right to the family and make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again," Gewin said.
In an effort to make it right, Gewin said the city corrected its records, waived the burial fee for Ms. Vaughn and issued the family a new deed to insure the Vaughns won't be moved again.
While visiting the cemetery and seeing her parents' names both etched in stone together for the first time, Young said the whole experience has made it hard to grieve.
"I'm numb from it. Even past the point of being angry. I'm just tired, tired of being worried about it. It's just, yeah, you want to have it settled and just know," Young said.
The city has now issued a new written list of operating procedures to all city staff involved with cemetery operations.
The changes mandate better record keeping and reiterates that urns should not be moved with out prior written family consent.
Unlike private cemeteries which are regulated by the state Department of Licensing and can be penalized or shut down for serious violations, when it comes to city-run cemeteries like the one in Kirkland, it's up to the city itself to enforce local and state policy.
KING5 asked for the minutes from the most recent Kirkland Cemetery Board meeting and learned the board had not met in nearly seven years.
Gewin said the board hadn't met because the city hadn't changed its operating procedures or price structure since the last board meeting and added that board members communicate frequently in less formal ways.
