Jun 4, 2026
Four months and more than 1,000 miles later, the cremated remains of a Marine veteran are back with his family after they ended up with a buyer at a yard sale.
In February, a Florida woman named Susan Luckman purchased a wooden box at a yard sale — which the seller, in turn, said he’d bought at an estate sale. The box, however, wasn’t empty.
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Inside were the cremated remains of a former Marine identified on an attached placard as William Hawkins, who died in 2007.
Luckman told Tampa NBC affiliate WFLA that she decided, “I’m going to find the rightful owner. It needs to go somewhere. This is somebody. It’s a veteran. I can’t just leave it here.”
From there, Luckman made it her mission to ensure that the deceased Marine vet was returned to his family.
Bringing the remains home
“Sometimes urns don’t look like an urn,” Julie Hall, author and director of the American Society of Estate Liquidators, told Moneywise when discussing the Marine’s remains. “They’re detailed, they’re carved, they’re lovely. And boxes do sell very well at an estate sale.”
She also noted that, in her experience, it’s not uncommon for human remains to turn up when organizing an estate sale.
“Most of the time the families say, ‘Oh, yes, that’s Uncle Joe,’ or ‘that’s Dad,’ or ‘that’s my kitty cat,’” Hall explained. “We find a lot of those too. But the family normally takes them.”
If the family doesn’t want the remains, she calls the attorney handling the estate sale and engages in the appropriate legal processes.
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In this case, Florida law says “cremated remains are not property” and, therefore, can’t legally be sold.
Luckman said she contacted the crematory that handled Hawkins’ remains but got no leads. So instead she reached out to WFLA for help publicizing her search for the Marine’s family, which eventually connected her with Hawkins’ only living relative — a nephew, Rody Daniels, in St. Louis.
Daniels said his uncle served twice in Vietnam and, upon meeting Luckman to retrieve the ashes, told WFLA, “He’s looking down now, thinking, wow, I’m finally going home.”
It remains unclear how or why someone put a price tag on Hawkins’ remains at an estate sale, but Hall says it “sounds like it was just a terrible mistake” — one that highlights the key step everyone should take before managing a loved one’s estate sale.
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The key step you must take before any estate sale
According to a 2023 survey of the estate sale industry, the average sale generates roughly between $10,000 and $20,000 in revenue, with the estate companies that help run them earning roughly between 30% and 40% in commission.
Jewelry, precious metals, fine art and antiques ranging from furniture to clothing and kitchenware are among the best-sellers at estate sales these days — and those are also some items that many relatives may prefer to keep in the family.
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That’s why the key step to take when you arrange the sale of a loved one’s estate — and one Hall says she ensures clients do first — is making sure you take everything you want before opening the doors to buyers.
“We ask our clients to remove anything of a personal nature, such as personal documents that may have social security numbers on it, any photographs that they would like to retrieve, special jewelry of Mom’s,” Hall explained. “I was always very fastidious about, ‘Are you sure you have everything out?’”
‘Entirely too much stuff’
That’s because once you sell an item at an estate sale, even if by accident, it’s likely gone for good. Hall notes that, first, the buyer has no real legal obligation to return it and, second, many buyers come from out of state, making them harder to track. And while estate sale companies may record the names of the individual buyers, privacy laws mean they can’t legally disclose that information to the family.
Hall says one of the best tips she can offer for avoiding such issues is for families to hold open discussions about their loved one’s wishes for their belongings while they’re still alive — including handing down valuables or sentimental items before they pass away.
“We have, as Americans, entirely too much stuff,” Hall said. “And I think we need to hone in on what’s the most important, and we need to make a plan for what’s most important.”
That, of course, includes a relative’s cremated remains that may happen to be lying around the house.
“I think it’s a good teaching moment,” she said of the case of the Marine’s cremated remains. “More importantly than grabbing the crystal or the silver, it’s equally as important, when you’re sorting through a loved one’s items, that they are put to rest appropriately.”
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Mike Crisolago is a Sr. Staff Reporter at Moneywise with nearly 20 years of experience working as a journalist, editor, content strategist and podcast host. He specializes in personal finance writing related to the 50-plus demographic and retirement, as well as politics and lifestyle content.
