Lynnwood woman paying it forward, searching for owners of stolen jewelry given her by mistake

LYNNWOOD – A burglary victim wants to pay it forward. She says a thoughtful and caring stranger returned some of her stolen property. She wants to return the favor, by finding the rightful owners of jewelry that was given to her by mistake.

“I don’t know but there’s stories in this box,” says Dana Hwu, who’s spent the last day going through a box of jewelry, trying to figure out who it might belong to.

“These are somebody’s memories. Maybe you just wore it once, but you wore it to a special day.”



Hwu knows what it’s like to lose something that has special meaning. Just before the holidays, her Lynnwood home was burglarized. Someone broke through her front door and went through every drawer in the house.

“You just have this feeling of being violated. I was in the middle of making Christmas cookies, and our house was decorated for the holidays and someone came in and helped themselves.”

They took some electronic equipment and Hwu’s jewelry box. It had items that had been handed down to her from her late grandmothers.

“They’re gone now, that was a piece of them that I had left and now that’s gone, too. It’s something you can’t replace. It wasn’t gold, it wasn’t diamonds or any sort of jewels. But it was very valuable to me.”

Hwu was hopeful when a woman called her Wednesday, and said she wanted to return her iPad and some other items. They had been found in a backpack left on the sidewalk about a mile from her house.

“I said I don’t really know what to do. She said a thank you was good enough. You know it kind of restores your faith in people, there’s really good people out there.”

Unfortunately, none of Hwu’s jewelry was in the box. But now she’s doing what she can to make sure the person who did lose these pieces gets them back.

Lynnwood police told her there had been a rash of jewelry burglaries in her neighborhood around the holidays.