What's 'in': Relocating Items You Lost Years and Years Ago

You know how you lose something, and then decades later a random woman hunts you down to tell you that her brother, a priest who died recently, had been in possession of your missing thing for all these years? This has been happening to a lot of people lately.

Not the priest-brother part of the tale, but the part about reconnecting with items that had disappeared zillions of years ("decades") ago. Chicago resident Ray Gordon, for example, lost his Pekin (Illinois) Community High School class ring 38 years ago while washing his hands in a department store restroom. He thought his treasured memento of beloved high school memories had ended up in the same vortex where all the missing socks and cats go. But one day last week, a Pekin school official came to his house bearing his long-lost ring:

[The school official] explained that a woman called the school from Chicago to relate that her brother, a priest, had recently died and she found the ring among his belongings.

"I can only think the priest must have worked at Carson before he was a priest," Gordon said. "He probably meant to turn the ring in but just forgot."

People lose their class rings a lot, it seems. But no worries! The rings are all being unearthed now:

  • Herby Morris of Bonner Springs, Kansas recently reunited with his 1966 Bonner Springs High School class ring after 43 years apart. Morris had lost his ring down a shower drain and had given up hope of ever seeing it again. But somehow the ring ended up in some dirt, and in 1976 a kid found it, just lying there on the ground. The kid's dad held onto the ring for 35 long years, eventually using Internet technology to post a "found ring" ad on a Bonner Springs High alumni web page. In May 2011, some guy saw the ring being advertised on the page and facilitated the reunion between Morris and his ring. Morris received the ring in the mail on Thursday. Well golly.
  • Mike Sabatino, a 1987 grad of Manatee High School grad in Bradenton, Fla., lost his class ring 25 years ago after some meatheads attacked him during a Ted Nugent concert. "I got beat up good, but what hurt me more was losing the ring, because I'd bought it with my own money," he says. Little did he know that a stagehand for Nugent named Cosmo Wilson had found the ring and pocketed it. Recently Wilson got on the Facebook, found Manatee High's page, and contacted the page administrator, who posted a pic of Sabatino's ring. Bing bang boom, a connection was made.
  • Paul Thompson, a 63-year-old business consultant (not to be confused with Paul Thompson the neurology professor at UCLA, or Paul Thompson the cardiothoracic surgeon in Florida), reunited with his class ring (Prospect High School, Class of 1965 y'all) after 46 years apart. Prospect's dean tracked down Thompson after somebody discovered the ring in a yard eight blocks away from the high school and brought it to her office.

Besides class rings, what other things are people reconnecting with these days?

Never give up hope.

[Sun-Times, Bradenton Herald. Image Mickey Glitter/via Flickr.]