A Delta widow whose home was broken into on Christmas Eve is thanking the person who returned an urn containing her late husband's ashes.

On Friday afternoon, Carol Lalonde received a phone call from a pastor of the Salvation Army telling her someone had dropped off the silver hockey puck that held her husband's cremated remains. The urn was among several items burglars nicked from her house last month, including televisions and jewelry.

"I started to shake and shiver and cry, and my head was going crazy. I couldn't believe it, because that was all I asked to get back. If I could have that back, then I wouldn't care about the rest of the things," Lalonde told CTV News.

Lalonde's husband of 58 years, Laurence, passed away last year. He was a huge hockey fan and would call his wife "Babe," so in his memory the nickname was engraved onto the symbolic container.

Following the robbery, Lalonde made an emotional plea for the thief to return Laurence's remains to a police station or church. Now she is extremely grateful to have them back.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, for whoever returned it," she said. "God bless you for having thought of me to bring it back to me."

Police are keeping the urn for their investigation, but will return it to her Monday, Lalonde said.

The urn containing Lalonde's late husband's ashes was one of several stolen around Christmas during different Lower Mainland burglaries.

On Christmas morning, four masked men broke into a Surrey condo belonging to Trevis and Lindsay McGuire and took a sentimental ring as well as the remains of Lindsay's father and aunt.

Two days earlier, thieves made off with the ashes of Russ Moerman's late girlfriend after robbing his home in Langley.

Police didn't believe people were consciously targeting human remains, but said they hadn't seen a similar wave of crimes like it before.

"In my 15-year career, I've never heard of it to this extent in a short amount of time," Delta police Const. Ciaran Feenan said in December.

With files from CTV British Columbia's St. John Alexander