“It’s not fair, it’s not right,” Connie Whitham said.
Two weeks ago, someone broke into the Whitham’s house.
“Well, it’s scary, it’s very freighting. Then, we checked to see what all was missing,” said Connie.
The person walked away with some extremely valuable sports memorabilia that Connie’s son Jeremy has been collecting his whole life.
“I was mad, sad and depressed that someone would do that to me,” Jeremy said.
Some of the things they took include an original signed Mickey Mantle rookie card, a signed Babe Ruth baseball, and 13 Michael Jordan rookie cards, but Jeremy held out hope.
“I believed if God wanted me to have them that they’d come back — and they did,” said Jeremy.
A few days later, the thief had a change of heart.
“I didn’t know why someone would stick an Aldi’s bag in my mailbox, and inside were some of his missing items,” Connie said.
Jeremy’s spectacular collection is a combination of love and autism. One of his traits is set collecting, and while his Michael Jordan rookie cards are still missing, he’s thankful his other collection was left untouched.
“I own over 1,000 basketballs,” said Jeremy. “I’ve been to the biggest basketball museum and at that time I was missing seven of them, out of the whole museum, and now I’m only missing two of them.”
Come August, Jeremy plans to open a museum of his own, next to his house, right here in Osceola.
“He’d like to be his own curator of his museum, and have people stop by and chat basketball and sports equipment with him, and I think that’s an awesome thing for him to do,” Connie said.
