A Napier woman heartbroken after mistakenly putting her daughter's woodworking project out to collection is hopeful it will be returned.
Onekawa resident Dayna Hildreth was tidying up over the weekend when things went wrong.
While out shopping together, Ms Hildreth asked her daughter if she wanted to keep the colourful woodworking pieces she had made.
There was a TV cabinet and another unit, both with similar designs and with bright colours.
"I said, 'Can I put them out front?' She said, 'Yeah, just leave the TV in the TV cabinet'," Ms Hildreth told 1 NEWS.
"I popped them out front and there they went.
"There was a nice man - I yelled out the window, 'Can I help you pack it? Need a hand?'"
But there was one problem: her daughter only meant for the TV cabinet to go out, not the other project.
"I called her and went, 'You wouldn't believe it! They went in four minutes.'
"What do you mean by 'they'?'" her daughter responded.
The daughter, now 25, built the colourful unit while in high school and was still attached to the piece.
When she found out it was gone, she was devastated, Ms Hildreth says.
"She was gutted. She didn't speak or anything… She came home and I was in tears."
The family says they'd love to get the piece back and Ms Hildreth is hard at work trying to make that happen.
"I'm looking around town now at every car, wondering, 'Is that the one?' I could probably recognise it again," she says.
"I'm just gutted. Stewed all day on Sunday… I just keep hoping somebody's going to put it on the front porch."
An appeal on the local community Facebook group has had a positive response so far, with an outpouring of sympathy and support.
Ms Hildreth says she's also considering a flyer-drop at the local kindergartens as there was a carseat in the vehicle that picked the item up.
"It's gorgeous and would look absolutely beautiful in a little girl's bedroom… But to my girl it's kind of important."
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