Thieves steal Everett woman’s father’s Bible from car, 3 weeks after his death

In the three weeks since Everett resident Lamiah Blackmore’s father died of cancer, she has carried around his Bible as a way of keeping a piece of him alive with her.

The night her father died, she took his Bible home with her for comfort. The book contains personal touches of her dad, as he made notes around and underlined passages that he found most meaningful.

In the back of the Bible, she found a note that her father had written her older sister in 1995. Until that moment, Blackmore’s family members had forgotten that the note existed. Finding it was like a special blessing from their dad in their time of grief, she told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

“[The note] was saying how amazing we were and how blessed he was that we were in his life,” she said. “It was just such a touching note … it was so memorable.”

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During a shift last Thursday evening at the Everett Mall Red Robin, Blackmore’s place of work, she left the Bible in her locked car so that she could read it on her break. She made sure to shove it deep underneath the driver’s seat with her purse, where she said the they could not be seen.

But when she came out to her car at the end of her shift, her car door was broken, the interior ransacked, and her purse — with the Bible — were gone.

“Someone still had the audacity to go in and break into my car and just grab that one single thing that I held close to my heart,” she said.

Blackmore said she felt at that moment as if she were watching her father take his last breath all over again.

“The moment that I noticed that it was gone, I felt my heart break … I was down on my knees in tears,” she said. “Why would someone do this to me? I haven’t done anything to them.”

The Bible was not the only irreplaceable item in her car. The thief also took her sermon journal, in which Blackmore has taken careful notes on parts of sermons that speak to her during three years’ worth of church services.

She can only hope that the thief takes the time to read some of the painstakingly-taken notes in her journal, instead of just throwing it out.

“I hope when they’re reading through those sermons, they learn something, and learn that it was something they should have not done,” she said. “And I hope the Lord just touches their heart … maybe it’s not in a trash can somewhere, maybe it’s being used the way it should be.”

With her most prized possession gone, a handwritten note on Blackmore’s dash now reads, “There’s nothing left to steal.”

This was not the first time that Blackmore’s car has been broken into; in recent years, car prowlers have stolen from her three times.

She has had enough.

“I’m done, this is not fair — I just want my things back,” she said. “I want people to stay out of my car, because I feel like I’m being violated.”

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