Lowlifes Steal Cross

The full article from 9News Now, a local channel here in the D.C. area:

Hospital Volunteer's Cross Stolen From Chapel

WASHINGTON DC (WUSA) She raised six children and was grandmother to 13 others, but 71 year old Patricia Perna always found time to do more.

Perna was a girl scout leader, water aerobics instructor, and had volunteered more than seven thousand hours at the Washington Hospital Center, before ovarian cancer claimed her life last January.

Her family and friends filled the chapel at the hospital Tuesday to receive a brass cross with Perna's name on it from the women's auxillary. That's when they got the unthinkable news. The cross was missing.

Investigators are trying to track down the brazen thief who stole the cross right off a church altar.

The theft from the Washington Hospital Center chapel was discovered just hours before the cross was to be blessed and given to the family of Perna.

Being a place of worship, the hospital chapel is open to anyone 24 hours a day. There is no security guard or surveillance camera in the chapel.

The hospital wouldn't let 9News Now take pictures in the chapel. Nobody could provide a photo of the two foot by two foot brass cross, but the hospital is asking for the public's help to find it.

You'll know it when you see it. It has Patricia Perna's name engraved across the front of it.

[source]

What is WRONG with people, to do such a thing as steal a cross dedicated to a volunteer? For the monetary value of the brass?

Even worse, as a society we have become inured to such deeds and shrug them off, saying, "What else can you expect? The chapel wasn't locked."

Has our society reached the point that we have to lock down everything, even on the altars of places of worship?