Widower's stolen memories of his wife returned

(CNN) - Dave Lacey stood motionless in his living room, his eyes tracing the glass from his shattered porch door to the empty shelf that once held his XBox. In the home invasion, the burglars focused on the high priced items in his house - electronics and jewelry. But Dave barely paused as he cataloged them for the police. The one item he stressed in his police report was his wife's Canon camera.

"It just didn't seem fair," he recalls, "because after all that we went through, to lose those, it was like a punch in the gut."

By "those" he means the pictures on the camera's memory card that he had not yet backed up on a computer. The card held the last pictures of him and his wife, Erica Werdel. They were the pictures from her funeral.

"Even though those are hard pictures to see, they're still something I want captured and want to remember," says Dave.

Love, marriage and death

When Dave met Erica, it wasn't like being struck by lightning or seeing fireworks. That sort of schmaltz didn't have a place in their time together, a pragmatic theme that would weave through their relationship. They knew each other casually at first, through work. Dave couldn't help but notice the dark-eyed brunette who could make anyone laugh. He also noticed the petite woman was, unexpectedly, a great basketball player. And he couldn't help but pause when she spoke, her eyes kind and generous.

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