A Marine Park woman says she is still searching for her dog’s ashes after a local animal hospital handed them out to a stranger — leaving the elderly woman devastated.
“I am heartbroken because I’m not getting anywhere,” said 80-year-old Fran Moran, whose 15-year-old bullmastiff mix, Molly, served as her son’s companion during a fatal battle with cancer. “They don’t call me back. You wait and wait and wait, and you don’t even hear from the doctor who owns the place.”
Moran told Brooklyn Paper that she brought her beloved Molly to Animal Hospital of Brooklyn on March 20 because she wasn’t eating, and was told by the doctor that the canine had a large tumor and would have to be put down.
On March 26, she said she received a call from the Flatbush Avenue animal hospital saying Molly’s remains were ready to be picked up. But when her grandson went in two days later he was told they weren’t there.
“He called me from there and he said ‘Nanny, they said they can’t find her,’” Moran recounted.
First, her grandson was told that another employee who wasn’t scheduled that day may have moved the ashes and to check back the next day, Moran said.
“They said ‘you have to come back later because maybe the receptionist put her somewhere,” Moran said. “Ever since then, we went back every other day checking in, [and] they said ‘We can’t find her, we have no cameras.’”
After about a week of different excuses, Moran said animal hospital employees began claiming that an elderly man with “salt-and-pepper” hair had come to pick up Molly — asking for the dog by name.
“She said, “I gave it to an older man and he asked by name for Molly,’” Moran said. “She said, ‘He came in and asked for it, and that’s why I gave it to him.’”
Moran and her family say no one they know matches that description.
“I don’t have an elderly man in the family,” Moran said. “My husband is deceased. I don’t know who they are talking about.”
Moran said Molly came to her family as a rescue and was particularly special to her son through his cancer treatment.
“She was his whole life,” the woman said. “She was so much to us.”
And despite never having received her dog’s ashes, Animal Hospital of Brooklyn has yet to refund Moran the $600 cost for the cremation. Moran also says staffers, frustrated by her frequent calls, have since accused her family of trying to scam the animal hospital, and of knowing the man who walked away with Molly’s remains.
But the Moran family — who reached out to police, but were told officers could not investigate because it is a civil matter — say they just want their beloved canine’s ashes back.
“I just thought maybe someone took her by mistake, anything, because mistakes happen and I understand that,” Moran said. “But for something like this, it’s just my heart isn’t complete. I just got to know where she is.”
The animal hospital declined a request for comment.
