Valerie Stevenson recently discovered that she hadn’t received her cat’s ashes 20 years ago, but the ashes of a dog named Sparky A Burlington resident is searching for the rightful owners of Sparky, a dog cremated at Gateway Cremation services in 2005, whose ashes were mistakenly given to her instead of her cat’s two decades ago. Valerie Stevenson had her cat, Jewels, cremated with Gateway Cremation in 2005 and had received a blue urn that she had been told contained the remains of her companion. The urn sat on her dresser for 20 years until one of Stevenson’s other cats knocked it from its spot and broke it. While attempting to replace the broken vessel and transfer the ashes into a new urn, Stevenson discovered a bone-shaped tag with the name Sparky on it. Jewels was cremated 20 years ago, and the location of her ashes are currently unknown. Provided by Valerie Stevenson “I was in disbelief,” Stevenson said. “I was upset and I really just couldn’t understand it. I never would have even known had my mischievous cat not knocked the urn off of the dresser.” Stevenson has been trying to find Sparky’s original owners since she discovered the mix-up, but has yet to find any success. The tag listed that Sparky was also cremated in 2005 and that his original owners lived on Maplewood Drive in Burlington and listed a phone number, but the number has since been assigned to a new owner and the house listed on the tag has changed hands several times since 2005. Gateway Cremation’s records only date back as far as 2016, and Stevenson was told that any records older than that would be inaccessible and that there wasn’t anything more they could do. Stevenson said that she received an apology from James Garrity, the general manager and vice-president of Gateway, and that she has made her peace with them. While Stevenson is still holding onto the hope that the containers were swapped by mistake and that the family who should have received Sparky got Jewels instead, her main goal is to reunite the family with Sparky. “My hope is that I received the wrong container and, hopefully, Sparky’s owners had the wrong one too,” Stevenson said. “If I had Sparky, maybe I could locate them and they would have Jewels. I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to locate them with the resources I have, but I haven’t been able to find them yet. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I don’t have Jewels and I don’t know if I’ll get her back, but I would really like to be able to get Sparky to his rightful owners.” Anyone with information on the people who owned Sparky, who lived on Maplewood Drive in 2005, is asked to reach out to Stevenson at [email protected] to help find the long-lost dog’s family.