The Upalco Cemetery is unique.

There is no manicured lawn, just a few lilac bushes, and scattered iris greens. A couple dozen family plots lay side by side, undisturbed. At least until a couple of flower-snatching marauders sacked the place.

Connie Hart, a recent widow, is outraged at the theft and tampering that has taking place and the mess left behind.

Hart’s husband, Allen, was laid to rest in September, buried next to her grandson, Justin, who died the year before. It’s the hardest loss she’s known, Hart said, adding that her husband was there to help her when she buried her mother and her grandson.

“We were side-by-side for 26 years,” Hart said. “We had plans like so many people do.”

Just before Memorial Day, Hart and her daughter and grandchildren arrived at the Upalco Cemetery with armfuls of colorful silk flowers and metal baskets. They brought enough flowers to cover her husband and grandson's graves, as well as to brighten the plot that held Hart’s stepfather and her mother.

“She grew a beautiful flower garden, so we filled the entire area with flowers,” Hart said.

The hours spent yanking weeds from the hard-packed dirt and raking away debris before decorating the graves was an exercise in love. Hart was so pleased with the results she photographed the sites.

Hart returned to the cemetery a few weeks after Memorial Day to lay a flower on each of her loved ones' graves. But when she pulled her vehicle through the ornate iron gates and around the bend closest to her husband's grave, she found two empty mounds of earth.

“I went into shock,” she said. “There wasn’t a flower in the whole cemetery. Some of the knickknacks were gone. My great-granddaughter had made a wreath with a laminated photo of them and their daddy that was wired to a pole. It had hung there for two years. It was all gone.”

Hart walked to her mother and stepfather's plots. They were stripped as well. She began walking from one plot to another.

“There wasn’t a flower on the place,” she said.

Hart called Upalco resident Mark Thacker and asked him where the flowers had gone? Hart said Thacker told her he didn’t know but would check into the theft. Two weeks went by and Hart called Thacker for some answers.

“He said they thought they knew who it was,” Hart said.

She promptly called Duchesne Sheriff Travis Mitchell about the matter.

“He said he was investigating it and he would call me back,” Hart said.

Weeks went by without a word, she said. Finally, in frustration, she left a message demanding that Mitchell call her back immediately, which he did.

According to Hart, Mitchell said he thought he knew who had done it – children. He approached the family. The mother of the children denied that they were involved.

“Mitchell said they’d been in trouble before,” Hart said. “He said he gave them a stern talking to and they wouldn’t do it again.”

Hart said she felt that more should be done, but what?

Mitchell explained that she could press criminal charges. He told Hart it was a lengthy process but she was within her rights as a victim of theft. Hart declined.

Hart has contacted individuals who have family members buried in the cemetery to let them know what has happened. She said she has been told more than once that the children were performing a Good Samaritan act, indeed a community service by cleaning up the cemetery. She is incensed, claiming that the flower-snatchers are being protected by the community.

“That’s the biggest bunch of bull I’ve ever heard,” Hart said. “If the kids had been cleaning the cemetery, why didn’t they go in with a shovel and rake and clean out the weeds and rake the cemetery?People want to sweep this under the rug. What do you do when people won’t stand behind you?”

Mitchell told the Uintah Basin Standard there was no evidence to prove criminal intent, however, he respects that Hart is upset over the matter. He added that he understands the intrinsic value of what was lost goes beyond the monetary value of the items.

The sheriff he can send a deputy to the cemetery to check on things, but it is up to the people who have family members buried there to “keep watching out.”

Even though a cemetery is a public place, anything placed on the graves is private property and its removal is considered theft, Mitchell said. However, he noted that the public must be aware that whatever they put on the graves is especially vulnerable to theft because it is basically unprotected.

“That’s my cemetery, too,” the sheriff said. “I have a vested interest in it. My grandparents and parents are buried there.”