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DENVER -- A Denver woman trusted a Cherry Creek jewelry repair store to fix her favorite bracelet. Instead, the store accidentally gave it away to the wrong customer.
"It's a big loss, because it's something that I love," said Carolyn Borwick, looking at her wrist where the diamond tennis bracelet her husband gave her used to be. "It was a love gift to go with my wedding setting."
Just before Christmas last year, she noticed a broken link and took the bracelet to Fast Fix at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, but she never got it back.
"We did something wrong and we've tried to make it right," said Doug Smith, the owner of Fax Fix in Denver and two other locations in Colorado. "An employee gave it to another customer by mistake. We've never had anything like this happen to us before."
Smith said Borwick's bracelet was in the cleaning machine when an employee accidentally gave it to the wrong customer who took off with it. The customer was there for a cleaning, and while they have since changed the procedures, the customer had no ticket or receipt and the surveillance cameras at the time were under maintenance.
"That employee was immediately terminated," said Smith, who said they have since tried to make Borwick whole by offering similar bracelets or a $2,000 check. "We can replace the bracelet, but we can't replace the sentiment that a family member gave it to me."
However, Borwick said one bracelet offered was 10K gold instead of 14K, and the other bracelets were not as valuable as hers, which she believes is worth closer to $4,000.
"I should get that back and I shouldn't have to argue with them about it," she said. "I want people to know that this can happen to them."
