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Rev. Michael Rice would have expected such a callous crime in a large urban centre, but not in peaceful Corner Brook, a city of about 25,000 snuggled into the mountainous folds of western Newfoundland.

Yet earlier this month, while Mr. Rice led about 250 mourners through a funeral service for a long-time church volunteer, a crook was in the basement of St. John the Evangelist Anglican church stealing cash - and the dead man's wallet - out of the widow's purse.

Several other robberies this month showed how low criminals can stoop.

RCMP in Harbour Breton, Nfld., charged a 46-year-old female church volunteer last week with stealing sympathy cards filled with money. And in Saskatoon, a thief ransacked the apartment of an elderly woman attending her husband's funeral, snatching wedding bands and a 50th anniversary watch her husband wore until he died.

"Criminals read the paper too," Ontario Provincial Police Constable John Reurick said, adding that these types of crimes aren't uncommon. Thieves often target families who they know won't be at home thanks to funeral notices or wedding announcements, he said.

Victims say being looted during a profound moment of joy or sorrow makes the financial hit that much harder.

Sean and Lacey Chapman's August wedding reception in Udora, Ont., about 90 kilometres northeast of Toronto, had gone off without a hitch: great speeches and dancing until 2 a.m.

The next morning, the couple woke up to a phone call from the hall manager, saying the hall had been destroyed in the night. They rushed back and found chaos: almost every fragile gift smashed, wedding cake smeared everywhere - the tiny bride and groom cake-topper tossed on the floor.

Cash-stuffed envelopes were missing, and so was a video camera containing their only wedding footage.

The bride cried. "I think we all did," said the groom's mother, Sandy Barnard, of Pefferlaw, Ont.

"It was just something that you couldn't believe."

Police suspected that local teens, who had tried unsuccessfully to crash the party, had somehow snuck back in and hidden in washroom stalls until everyone left. Four years later, the couple live in Petawawa, Ont., where Mr. Chapman serves in the military - but no one has been caught for the wedding-day crime.

Thieves also escaped in the McKee case in St. Catharines, Ont. About three hours after Linda McKee's 86-year-old father died on Jan. 19, 2006, two new ATVs worth about $24,000 were stolen from her driveway. Someone simply hooked up the trailer and drove away, since the dozen mourners inside the house were too shell-shocked to notice, said her husband, Alan McKee.

"My wife never got a chance to grieve," said Mr. McKee, a retired millwright, adding the family spent the next few hours juggling their grief and a police report.

"You have to be a really cruel person to do that."

Constable Reurick, a Lambton OPP officer who has seen many similar cases, says people need to take precautions to prevent these types of incidents, like recruiting someone to stay at their home when they're at a ceremony that's been publicized.

"The criminal is not a fool," he said.

Two weeks ago, Bill Edwards began offering security services at his family-owned funeral parlour after hearing about a string of robberies from the homes of mourners in Saskatoon.

"We knew we had to advise the families ... that they were exposed to a risk," said Mr.

Edwards, owner of Saskatoon Funeral Home. "We didn't want to just present them

with a problem. We wanted a solution."

Now, for $15 an hour, a security guard will sit outside a mourner's home, guarding its contents while its inhabitants attend a funeral. At least two families have already taken advantage of the service, Mr. Edwards said.

It's the type of thing that at least one Saskatoon family wish they could have taken advantage of.

"You have to take precautions ... make it more difficult for these people," said Bill, who didn't want his last name published to protect his mother, whose dead husband's watch and rings were stolen from her apartment earlier this month.

"There's such a sense of violation," he said. "You've just been at a funeral for a spouse of 54 years."