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Rockport man's cremated remains turn up in the dunes on Padre Island

The Coastal Park's Director says one of his employees spotted the remains inside a box that was left in the dunes at Padre Balli park.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — County crews are always out along the shoreline picking up debris and working on making the beach as nice as possible. A county worker found a box at the base of a dune and thought it might contain something important. It did. 

Cremated remains along with a man's name and the year of cremation -- marked 2005 -- were found inside.

"It had been there for a very long time and eventually the dunes just eroded away and there it was, it was sitting there at the face of the dunes," Coastal Parks Director Scott Cross said.

The box and the remains could have ended up in the dumpster according to Cross.

"They thought it was just kind of debris," he said. "Thankfully, the maintenance worker had the wherewithal to know that, 'Hey this is probably not something that just needs to go in the trash'.” 

Cross said he’s going to return the cremated remains to the Saxet Funeral Home in Rockport and see if they can find any family members who will then decide what they want to do with the remains. 

And yes, you can scatter remains over uninhabited public land, but you cannot bury them in a place like the dunes unless the container is biodegradable.  

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