Think you’d never misplace or lose your favorite gem? Think again. It happens to the best of us. Sometimes they’re gone for good, and sometimes they turn up again in unexpected ways, like in these 8 stories of rings lost—and then found. (And remember, since not every story can have a happy ending, you should always insure your
most beloved pieces of jewelry.)
Stories of Rings Lost & Found
Emotional Downpour
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8
Dispose of Properly
Pocketful of Miracles
A Pipe Dream
Culinary Surprise
Buried Treasure
A Big Hole Mess
Search & Rescued
One stormy night, Esther Cicic was running through a huge thunderstorm with her colleagues to perform a concert in Leipzig, Germany, when one of the singers she was with tripped on the cobblestones. He didn’t realize until he
arrived at the concert that his wedding band was missing from his finger.
Throughout the show, the groom was freaking out about his lost ring. But little did he know that mere hours later, he would find the needle in a haystack: “Walking back to the hotel afterwards,
he was retracing his steps and found
the ring between the cobbles!”
Tiffany Doerr took her ring off one night while making dinner and put it on the counter. “When I was cleaning up spilled salad, I scooped everything up and shoved it down the disposal,” she says.
“I heard something clunking around in there, so I shut it off and fished around
for what was making the sound.”
When she pulled out the ring, it was missing the main stone. "I freaked out!” she says. Luckily, her husband Ryan was able to take the pipes apart and find the missing stone—but unfortunately, one corner of it had chipped off. Tiffany ultimately had the stone reset, but says she now keeps a ring holder in the kitchen at all times.
Greg Hensley and his wife Karin were visiting the Cincinnati Zoo one weekend. They decided to take a break and grab a bite to eat. “She went to get some cash out of her pocket, and when she pulled her hand out, I noticed the diamond was no longer on her ring,” he remembers. The couple searched frantically for it and retraced their steps, without any luck.
Back at home, Karin did laundry, including the shorts she'd worn that day. A few days later, she wore the same shorts to a museum and just happened to stick her hand in her pocket. “She felt something, and thinking it was a pebble, she pulled it out to find that it was actually the missing diamond!" Karin ended up having the ring reset and she’s still wearing it to this day.
Talk about good aim: Kelley Clegg’s
husband Jim was washing his hands in the bathroom sink when he grabbed the towel and his wedding band flew off his finger—and right into the toilet. (Can't you just picture this happening in slow motion?) But all hope of getting it back was flushed away...since the water was already flowing when it happened.
“The ring was missing for five years, until one day a friend of my daughter’s came over to visit," Kelley says. "She was in the bathroom and saw it there in the toilet. It must have been caught in the pipe weirdly all these years and just flushed back up. We got it out, and Jim’s still wearing it now!”
One New Year's Eve, Patty Hoag was busy prepping for a party when she decided to take her rings off. When she went to put them back on later, she realized they'd gone missing. “Everyone was due to arrive shortly and here I was going through bags of garbage because I was sure I must have thrown them out,” Patty says. But she didn’t.
Lo and behold, when she pulled the appetizers out of the oven an hour later,
her rings were sitting right on the lid.
“I took them to the jewelers the next day to make sure there was no damage from being baked at 350 degrees for one hour.” Thankfully, they were fine!
For her beachside wedding ceremony in the Bahamas, Cat Melazzo decided to tie her and her fiancé’s wedding bands to the inside of a conch shell that the ring bearer would carry. As she waited to walk down the aisle, the procession suddenly came to a halt—and she instantly knew what happened. Everyone pitched in to look for the missing rings, but eventually they used their friends’ bands instead.
“After the ceremony, my husband and I went to take pictures on the beach, but our friends were determined to find the rings,” she says. They sifted through the sand with mesh metal boxes for about
45 minutes before they finally turned
up. “The best part is that we have it all
on our wedding video and love
watching that part!”
Susan Wuornos never wanted to take off
her vintage engagement ring. She even
wore it when she showered. But one day
she got out of the shower and noticed her diamond was missing. "I was freaking out," she says. "I called the maintenance people in my apartment building to see if they could look in the drain.
When the worker left briefly to find a special tool to finish the job, Susan went into the bathroom and noticed a sparkly something on the bath mat. It was her diamond! "It must have shaken off while I was drying myself," she says. She had the ring reset, but Susan always still does the shake test to make sure the diamond isn’t loose.
After Sarah Weeger came home
from walking her dog, she realized her wedding band was in her pocket—but not her engagement ring. She searched for it around her neighborhood, enlisted a man with a metal detector, offered a reward, and even got the local media involved. "For three whole months,
I searched the route," she says. "So many people rallied behind me, offering support, search tips and well-wishes.
It was unbelievable."
She finally accepted it might be lost forever, so she and her husband filed a claim with her insurance and got a replacement ring almost identical to the original. A few hours after posting a picture of her new ring on Facebook, she went for another walk with her dog. And of course, the most amazing thing happened. "About five blocks away
from our house, I found it!" she says.
"It was a miracle."
