On Father’s Day morning, Barbara Cave awoke to find some of the most precious memories of her dad had been stolen.
A row of medals her father earned as an airman during the Second World War were taken from her car in the Burnside-Gorge neighbourhood. The thief didn’t take a new pair of hiking boots, an electronic printer and a few dollars in change, but rifled through the back seat to find a box from the Air Ministry of London, buried under other items, and four of the five service medals in the box were taken.
“I’m really angry right now, but it’s just covering up the sadness I’m feeling now,” Cave said Sunday. “I’m really quite devastated they were taken. My heart just sank.”
Geoffrey Charles Cave, who went by George, was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force and a navigator in Spitfire fighters and bombers, joining in 1939 as the war broke out and surviving the six years of carnage that followed in Europe and North Africa.
Barbara Cave said the war defined his early years and her father was determined to make the best of the rest of his life.
And he did.
He emigrated to Canada, earned a degree in education and became an excellent teacher, married his Canadian sweetheart and adopted two boys and two girls. He loved to teach, adored his children, had a passion for his garden and the White Rock community and “was telling dad jokes before I knew what dad jokes were,” his daughter said. “He always made us laugh. He always had former students looking him up. He had that wry British sense of humour. He was a good man.”
George passed away in 1987 and is survived by his wife, Margaret-Anne Paulette, who is 90 and still lives in White Rock.
Barbara Cave, 54, followed in her dad’s footsteps and became a teacher later in life. She said she had taken the medals to show her students in the Cowichan Valley School District and left them under piles of clothes in her car.
Stolen were George Cave’s 1939-1945 Star, Air Crew Europe Star, Africa Star and Defence Medal.
Oddly, the thief left one behind, Cave’s War Medal, as well as the ribbons that attach to each for his uniform.
The medals don’t have much value, said Barbara Cave, as they were made of alloys. Most can be bought and sold online. But she said these medals are irreplaceable “because they were given to my dad … and although he didn’t like to talk about the war alot, he was very proud of them and his service … so there’s no replacing that.”
Cave said the car was locked, so the thief likely used a device to unlock the doors. She recently had her car painted and there were no signs of forced entry.
She’s contacted Victoria police and the department has opened a file. Cave thinks the theft is like “a slap in the face” for all veterans. She’s calling pawn shops and military collector stores in her search for the medals.
“He survived that war and made a good life, so to think that someone has stolen these medals it’s hard to take,” said Cave. “We still have pictures and memories of dad, but the medals were something very special.”
Cave had already been inundated with bad news. She was a part-time server at Ricky’s All Day Grill close to her home on Douglas Street at Burnside. She worked there to help pay off her student loans and living expenses, but the restaurant was completly gutted by a fire on Friday.
The early morning blaze has been deemed suspicious and is under investigation.
“It was going to be good summer employment for me and a way to help pay some bills,” said Cave. “My boss there was really devastated, so it’s been an awful week all around.”
Anyone with information on Cave’s medals or suspicious activity in the early morning hours around her home in the Burnside-Gorge neighbourhood can call VicPD at 250-995-7654.
