Dave lost his new wife, and his photos of her. Then a beautiful thing happened.

Erica Werdel looked radiant when, at 28, she married her long-term partner Dave Lacey.

But if you look past Erica’s proud grin and delicate tulle veil in the wedding photos, you can just about make out the flesh-coloured bandage on her arm.

That bandage concealed a portacath for her chemotherapy.

You see, Erica was diagnosed with large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma just days before her wedding, and the cancer was so aggressive she’d had to begin chemo days after the diagnosis.

The disease mutated and spread through Erica’s body following the wedding — and in 2011, soon after Erica’s 30th birthday, it claimed her life.

CNN reported that Erica’s  husband Dave was left with just photos to remember his late wife by. So when robbers broke into Dave’s Santa Ana, California home in 2012 and stole the camera containing photos of Erica’s funeral, he was gutted.

“It just didn’t seem fair… because after all that we went through, to lose those, it was like a punch in the gut,” Dave told CNN. 

“Even though those are hard pictures to see, they’re still something I want captured and want to remember,” he said.

“It was a camera that was special”

Dave reported the crime to police but, given that an estimated five per cent of theft cases result in the items being returned to their items, it didn’t seem likely he’d ever see his photos again.

Remarkably, a year after the crime, Santa Ana robbery detective Paul McClaskey stumbled across the Canon camera during a visit to a pawn shop as part of a separate investigation.

When he turned it on, he realised the memories it held were not the ordinary type.

“I remember initially the photographs that came up, it appeared to be a sign at a wake, or memorial service,”  McClaskey told CNN.

“The people didn’t look like the suspect or his family at all.”

Detective Jerry Verdugo recalls:  “There were photographs of a funeral, a female who had been recently deceased.”

“We all take personal pictures, selfies. But this didnt appear to be selfies, this appeared to be something that you’re going to keep for 40 or 50 years, for the rest of your life,” he said.

“(I)t was apparent that it was a camera that was special.”

McClaskey and Verdugo became determined to reunite the device with its rightful owner.

And, remarkably, that’s exactly what they did — after Verdugo recognised a particular, nondescript brown wall on the northeast side of Santa Ana that led them to Dave’s house.

Dave: “I was in shock”

When the two detectives arrived at his door with his camera, Dave said he “thought it was a joke at first”.

“I had given up all thought of recovery… I was in shock,” he said, describing the moment he recognised some distinctive camera casing Erica had sewn.

“All the pictures were there, including a dozen pictures the thieves accidentally took of themselves in an apparent effort to either delete the pictures or take out the memory card,” he said.

He told CNN he had a feeling Erica was watching over him.

“I feel like someone was watching out for me, just to get it back,” he said, blinking back tears.

“Yeah, I still feel like she still does,” he said. “It makes things easier.”

It’s a sad tale with a touching end — even more so, given that the thieves were sentenced following the detectives’ remarkable work.

David Aguilar and his girlfriend Monica Molina both pleaded guilty to a series of burglaries, as CNN reports.

The pair were sentenced to 120 and 30 days in jail respectively, both with three years’ probation.

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