Police seek citizens’ help in finding stolen crucifix
- Stolen sculpture
LAKEWOOD – An apparently heartless thief – or thieves – took a bronze sculpture of Christ on the cross from a local hospice this week and police detectives are seeking help from the community in returning the spiritual icon to its home.
The large bronze crucifix was stolen from the chapel wall at Hospice of St. John sometime Tuesday morning, police said Thursday.
“It’s inconceivable that somebody would take a cross out of a chapel,” said Steve Cooper, president and chief operating officer of the hospice.
The cross brought comfort to the terminally hospice’s ill patients, their families and the staff of the hospice, Cooper said.
“A chapel is a place where people go … a place where our patients, their families and our staff go for solitude, to meditate, to pray. I just can’t imagine anyone having taken it.”
Investigators believe someone entered the chapel between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. Jan 2, removed the 3½ -foot by 2-foot statue from the wall at the front of the chapel and walked out with the sculpture in broad daylight. The wooden cross and the bronze sculpture mounted on it weigh a combined 75 pounds.
“It’s not something you can stick under a coat, this is a large cross,” Cooper said.
The value of the sculpture is believed to be between $10,000 and $12,000. Artist Lynn Kirchner sculpted the work, titled “Transcendent Christ”. It was commissioned and purchased by the Hospice of St. John in 2007.
The hospice is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of the sculpture.
The cross, Cooper said, is all that was taken and a number of other items, including electronic equipment and a donation box, were untouched.
Detectives said they don’t know whether the thief was interested in the metal value or the art value. Metro-area police and scrap metal dealers have put together a network to prevent art work and other stolen metal objects from being sold and melted down as scrap, according to Lakewood Police spokesman Steve Davis.
Last summer a large bronze sculpture of a coyote was stolen from its pedestal at Lakewood’s Coyote Gulch Park and police fear that statue, which has not been recovered, might have been stolen for its scrap-metal value.
Police urge anyone with information about the crime to call the Lakewood Police Department at 303-987-7111.
“We want our cross back,” Cooper said.
