Gail Teach skipped Thanksgiving with her daughter in Texas so she wouldn't miss her mother's birthday. She never missed her mother's birthday, not in life or in death.
On Nov. 26, she headed to Riverside National Cemetery, as she does every year, to sit beside her parents' grave and quietly grieve. She brought a stuffed reindeer for her mom -- who would have been 81 -- and a small pumpkin and an American flag for her dad, a veteran.
But when she reached the spot, something wasn't right. The headstone was there, but the names were different. Teach, 53, frantically paced row after row of granite markers searching for her parents'. Then she returned to the original site and sifted the soil under the stone to see if it had been freshly dug.
"I went to the supervisor and said, 'Hey, did you guys dig up my mom and dad's grave?' And he said no, and I said, 'So why is there another tombstone on top of it?' "
The supervisor then admitted that although her parents were still buried in the same plot, their stone had been removed, ground up and someone else's marker put in its place. Teach began to cry. He apologized and said the cemetery would provide a new stone for her parents' grave.
Distraught and angry, the Pomona woman demanded to know why anyone would grind up the headstone.
"I screamed and yelled, and that didn't get me any answers," she said. "I cried and cried, and that didn't get me any answers."
Teach had visited the grave in early October and everything was fine.
When she asked to speak to cemetery director Gil Gallo, she was told to write him a letter.
"This is not some small matter. It's a huge mistake, but they don't think they have to respond," she said recently, standing over the bare patch of earth where the headstone had been. She had decorated the dirt with two long-stemmed roses. "I just want to know what happened, and they just blow me off."
Cemetery officials admit they made a major blunder. They said it was the first of its kind in the 30 years since the memorial park opened, and it has prompted them to reevaluate their training procedures.
"The worst thing that can happen at a cemetery is putting the wrong person in the wrong grave. The second worst thing is putting the wrong marker on the wrong grave," said Jim Ruester, cemetery spokesman. He also said Gallo would be happy to speak to Teach personally.
