Marysville family who lost everything in burglary gets special gift from cop

MARYSVILLE, Wash. — A Marysville family robbed of nearly everything it owned is thanking the Marysville Police Department tonight, even though the stolen items haven’t been recovered. The thank-you is for one officer’s unsolicited actions after the burglary.

In his nearly two decades with the Police Department, Officer Nate Zaretzke has responded to home burglaries before but something about one he was called to last week really got to him.

“I think what was most heartbreaking was just the way the kids had to come home to this,” Zaretzke told us while we rode with him in his patrol car.

He was talking about Mikaela and her big brother, Gage. After school last Wednesday, they came home to a heartbreakingly thorough burglary.

“The more I was walking around, I noticed that a lot more was gone than I thought. Really, just every electronic we owned, besides the TVs, were gone,” Gage said.

The family lost money, wallets, a laptop, two Xboxes and two Kindles. Their dad Jeff Richards left work and met detectives at the scene, then shared a little bit of his story.

“That’s when he let me know ‘Hey I’m a single father, working hard to make ends meet for my family,’ and the amount of items taken were substantial,” Zaretzke said.

That very well could have been the end of it. The officers took the report and then moved on to the next call, but Zaretzke did not think that was enough and he showed up the very next day at Marysville Pilchuck High School bearing gifts.

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“Next morning I got a call about 8 (a.m.) or so from my son and he said, ‘Oh, Dad, you’re never going to believe this,’” Jeff said.

Gage was called to the office to pick up two Kindles that were gifts from Zaretzke.

“It was pretty emotional because, I mean, after we got broken into, we didn’t have anything left,” Gage said.

Jeff went to the Police Department to thank Zaretzke in person and then posted about his kindness on Facebook, and the story spread on social media like wildfire.

“I was extremely thankful and humbled. I didn’t expect anything,” Zaretzke said.

Neither did the Richards family.

“It’s kind of cool that somebody would care that much and do something like that for people he doesn’t even know,” Gage said.

Cox Media Group