Urn found floating in Intracoastal

Man on Waverunner finds container

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – Clive Taylor made an unusual discovery in the Intracoastal Waterway Sunday.  He found an urn floating in the water and when he opened it up, someone's ashes were inside.

"I'd like to give it back to whoever lost it," Taylor told Local 10's Roger Lohse. He discovered the container near the 163rd Street bridge as he zipped by on his wave runner.

"And what stuck out was this pearl, it's kind of shiny," said Taylor. "I didn't notice the metal too much so I turned around and picked it up and immediately it looked like an urn to me."

There's no name on the urn and nothing to identify the owner or the remains inside it. Taylor wonders if someone intended to spread the ashes in the water but forgot to take them out of the container.

"Or the other thing is, did somebody actually lose it? Maybe it fell off a boat when they were on their way out to do a ceremony," said Taylor. "Maybe it fell off somebody's dock. I don't know but it wasn't in the water long because this sticker on the bottom is paper and it's not deteriorated."

Lohse took pictures of the urn to Irv Panciera, a Hollywood funeral home owner for the past 50 years, but this one left him stumped.

"Well, they probably thought they could scatter the cremains and the urn slipped out of their hands and fell into the ocean. That's possible, I don't know," Panciera said.

Aside from the ashes inside the urn, the container itself is pretty valuable. The urns at Panciera's funeral home range from $275 to almost $800.

The urn Taylor found is currently sitting on his dining room table, but as nicely as the attractive vase matches his décor, he'd prefer to lay this mystery to rest.

"If this meant something to somebody -- if this was their loved one and it was an accident -- I want them to have it back," he said.