Saint of lost items stolen at UWGB

GREEN BAY (AP) - A statue taken from a secluded limestone chapel at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has caretakers praying for their lost St. Anthony.

On the far east side of the UW-Green Bay campus, tucked away in the Cofrin Memorial Arboretum , there's an old chapel made of limestone .

It was originally built by Odile LeMieux's family in 1925 as a place to worship privately on their property. For 84 years, a statue of St. Anthony has sat inside on the altar - until last weekend.

"Walking down here and not seeing the statue is like having a death in the family," Joan Jadin, the granddaughter of Odile LeMieux, said.

Jadin and her husband are the chapel's caretakers. They said they discovered the statute missing on Sunday morning. The irony is that St. Anthony is actually the Catholic patron saint of missing things - the saint someone prays to if they've lost something.

"That was just a popular Saint at the time," Jadin said of why her grandparents put a St. Anthony statue inside the chapel. "That's just who they prayed to and many people came down and prayed for lost articles," she added.

The LeMieux family sold the property to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay 25 years ago but Jadin and her husband Norbert still make sure the chapel is in good condition.

"The emptiness of the chapel without the statue is really heartbreaking," she said.

Police and the Jadins have already spent hours combing the nearby woods, searching for the statue. Investigators said they've found evidence that leads them to believe the statue was dragged away.

"When the theft was reported, our officers were out here for a couple hours, until it got dark, looking around," Lt. Keith Rosin, with UW-Green Bay Public Safety, said. "They were out here for another hour (Monday) but it's so overgrown that it's difficult to find something that may have been dumped out here," Rosin added.

Campus police said they are also checking with stores and websites where someone might try to sell the stolen statue.

In the meantime, the Jadins said they are just praying to Saint Anthony for his statue to return.

"Hopefully they didn't break it in anyway but if they don't return it, hopefully they respect it as much as we have all these years," Jadin said.

The family is offering a reward if the statue is returned.