Barbara Offenhartz has lived on earth for 89 years with a peripatetic spirit, taking her family on “cheap adventures”—from tent camping in an African national park to living in Japan for a year—just because they could.
Her final adventure ended in San Francisco, where last month a box of her cremated remains was transported from her son’s porch in Potrero Hill to a homeless shelter under an underpass, for reasons not even clear to her children.
The saga began last month, shortly after the death of Barbara Offenhartz, who lived outside Boston. Potrero Hill resident John Offenhartz, Barbara’s son, was getting help from an eastside funeral home to dispose of Barbara’s body, expecting the box containing his mother’s ashes to be delivered to his door as promised. But on or around the day the ashes were to arrive, he received a call from the funeral home.
Offenharz, 61, recalled being told by a funeral home employee on the phone: “Hey, we got a call from a homeless woman who said she found your mom’s ashes.” The employee relayed the finder’s phone number.
Ofenharz, who has lived in San Francisco for nearly half his life, said he and other neighbors in their tight-knit mountain community have a practice of bringing in other people’s packages if they find them on their porches.
“It’s an unofficial network,” he said. “People here know better than to leave stuff behind and we take care of each other’s stuff.”
John Offenhartz kept his mother’s ashes after being reunited with her after they were stolen from his porch last month. (Lea Suzuki/SF Chronicle)
When Ofenharz called the woman’s phone number, he suspected the package had been delivered and stolen by a porch thief. He said the post office was instructed to ring his doorbell, but the package was likely left outside the door unattended.
Ofenhartz said when the woman, Heather McCray, picked up the phone, she seemed more upset than he was. She told him she found the package – a black plastic box – and when she saw what was printed on it, she immediately knew what it contained.
It clearly stated: “Here are the cremated remains of Barbara H. Offenharz,” along with the date of her death and the phone number for St. Michael’s Crematorium in Boston. Representatives for the funeral home declined to comment.
McCray, who is from Los Angeles, said in an interview that she found the box at an electrical outlet outside the Division Circle Navigation Center on the corner of South Van Ness Avenue and 13th Street. When she saw the name was Barbara, she became even more desperate to know whose ashes belonged to them.
“My mother’s name was Barbara,” said McCray, who said she cremated her late mother in 2017 but never showed up for an appointment to bury her remains. “I didn’t even call to cancel. I knew I didn’t put my mom on the ground, and it reminded me of what I didn’t do.”
McCray and Offenhartz planned to meet outside a homeless shelter. When he arrived shortly after the call, she couldn’t help but laugh at his choice of transportation: a motorcycle.
“Be sure to tie her up!” McCree shouted to him, and Offenharz handed her $100, put the box in his backpack, and rode off.
“The way the story goes, the whole thing probably only takes half an hour from start to finish,” Offenharz said. “But it was a whirlwind.”
When Offenharz returned home, he felt a sense of relief—with shock and, oddly enough, a touch of amusement at how perfect the ordeal had been.
John Offenharz (left) poses with his mother, Barbara Offenharz. (Courtesy of John Offenharz)
Offenharz’s father died at the end of 2024. He said his mother, who died shortly after the anniversary of his father’s death, suddenly took a turn for the worse after suffering a brief respiratory problem.
His parents, who had been together for 65 years, were both chemists who met at Swarthmore College and hitchhiked to Europe for their honeymoon. After they both received their PhDs in physical chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, they began postdoctoral research in Cambridge, England.
They then traveled with their young daughter, Catherine, through Warsaw, Poland, along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Nakhodka, Russia, and then sailed to Japan, where they began a fellowship. There, during a typhoon, Offenharz was born.
Barbara’s box now sits on the dresser in the Offenharts’ living room, filled with old photos of the family’s colorful experiences over the years.
He kept wondering how his mother would react. He had a feeling she would like it.
“She was calm and composed. It took a lot of effort to get her upset and she was born for adventure,” he said. “I couldn’t help but think she would have said, ‘What a great story.'”
This article was originally published on His mother’s ashes disappeared from his San Francisco porch. Then the story took an incredible turn.