North Texas

Widow of Fallen Marine Pleads for Help after Late Husband's Rings are Stolen

The widow of a fallen U.S. Marine is at a loss after burglars made off with irreplaceable items belonging to her late husband.

"I miss him every day," said Amanda Cooper Anderson. "The world is definitely a little bit colder without him here."

Cooper Anderson and her boys can only cling to pictures of their father and, until recently, two rings he left behind.

"Every time he picked them up he had those rings on," she said. "And they can remember what they feel like on their skin and what those rings looked like on their dad's fingers."

"And we don't have them anymore. They're gone," Cooper Anderson said.

Gone, she says, after someone broke into her McKinney home on or around Dec. 6.

Cooper Anderson believes the culprits managed to enter the house through the garage.

"I could not put a dollar amount on what they took from me," she said.

Cooper Anderson says they made off with her debit card, some cash, her wedding ring, her late husband's Aggie ring engraved with "Nathan W. Anderson" inside, and with his gold wedding band that was returned to her after a tragic accident in February 2012.

"He was piloting a helicopter, the Huey helicopter, with a co-pilot and three crew chiefs in the back, and they had a mid-air collision with a Cobra helicopter with two pilots," Cooper Anderson said.

The grieving widow is holding out hope she'll recover the rings.

"Those rings symbolized a lifetime that Nathan and I had together that only got to last for 10 years," she said. "It was a tangible, I could just put my finger on the ring and just feel him and know that he was still with me."

Cooper Anderson says she only found out about the break-in after she was alerted to thousands of dollars being taken from a debit card she had not yet activated.

She says the card was activated and used several times in December in and around the Allen area.

Cooper Anderson says the rings were stored separately, indicating perhaps the perpetrator knew where to look.

"Someone knew what they were looking for, and I just pray it's not somebody I know," she said.

McKinney police confirm to NBC 5 that a police report was filed.

Cooper Anderson is contacting area pawn shops to see if the rings were taken there.

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