Military family loses all belongings after one-night stay in Sacramento: "Everything was burnt"
SACRAMENTO — A military family has lost everything after a one-night stop in Sacramento on their move up to Washington State.
The family was relocating up to a base in Washington, and on their drive up, a father and his two sons stopped for the night at a hotel near the Sacramento International Airport. The next day, all their belongings were found up in flames.
"All of our household goods, everything from my childhood, my husband's childhood, my children's childhood, everything was burnt," says victim Lynn Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is working on putting the pieces back together for her family after their U-Haul was stolen with all their belongings and burnt to a crisp. They're still looking for her husband's beloved truck.
"They found the U-Haul trailer the truck had been on, but my husband's truck is still gone somewhere in Sacramento," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said the F-150 was her husband's dream truck since childhood. He's active duty military and is currently in Korea.
"He's heartbroken," Rodriguez continued. "Even if we find it completely destroyed, even if we find it without any wheels, he said 'Well, I'll take the truck back."
The family is desperate to get back any sense of familiarity. They say household items are replaceable, but the sentimental stuff is what hurts the most.
"Our lives together, all the pictures, all of our digital files also were in there. So we don't even have anything to recreate things and all of our military awards," said Rodriguez who is retired from the military.
To make things worse, the incident happened just after Christmas.
"My son's bike he got for Christmas, that's all he could talk about for the next week. 'Well, Mom where's my bike?' And we have to say 'Well, it's gone.' " Rodriguez said.
Miraculously, one thing remained in the rubble.
"To find out of everything, one thing that did survive was our wedding album," Rodriguez said. "It was amazing to pull it out from a big old pile of everything burnt around it."
Police say this is an active investigation.
"From here on, I'm hoping my family can heal and move forward," Rodriguez said. "It really hurts to look back on everything we lost, but I just mostly want my kids to be taken care of."
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