A Mesa family says they received an unexpected delivery while preparing to lay their grandmother to rest.
Dorothy Kuspis, known as “Nanny” to her granddaughter Ashleigh Wegner, died May 27 at 98. Wegner said her family expected the loss, but the reality still hit hard.
In the days that followed, the family began making arrangements, including selecting an urn. Wegner said her mother and uncles chose an urn for Kuspis, and the family also set aside a small portion of cremated remains for close relatives.
Wegner decided to purchase a small keepsake urn—a brass heart—from Amazon.
“It came within a couple days,” Wegner said. “When I opened it, it was just a little dusty.”
Then, she said, the process took a disturbing turn.
“I unscrewed the back and that’s when I noticed it still had remains inside of it,” Wegner said. “And that was like, I have — who are you and what are you?”Wegner said the urn appeared to be new, but was caked with ashes that did not belong to her grandmother.
Wegner said this is not the first time she has encountered unidentified cremated remains.
“We’ve had a past similar situation,” she said. “So a few years back, me and my husband came across a box of ashes in an alleyway where we lived.”
She said they turned the remains over to the sheriff’s department, which located the family.
Wegner said she and her husband then spread those ashes in the Arizona mountains. Now, she said, they plan to do something similar with the ashes found inside the keepsake urn — this time near Flagstaff — because she does not want them to end up back in circulation.
For more information see Austin Walker “Mesa family gets unwanted surprise after ordering urn on Amazon” 13 News, June 16, 2026.