Long-lost treasure

Owner reunited with class ring 32 years after losing it

by Kevin Smith

Rick Ricks doesn’t wear jewelry.

He’s never had his ears pierced, worn a chain or even, to his wife’s displeasure, worn his wedding ring. He doesn’t believe in it.

But over the last few days, Ricks has bucked the trend to proudly wear a piece of jewelry he waited 32 years to get his hands on again.

In 1977, Ricks lost his Lewis Cass High School class ring just a week after paying $99 for it. He had saved the money from a job bailing hay the previous summer.

“I might have lost it when I was swimming in France Park, but later on that year we went to Daytona Beach for spring break. After that I thought I lost it there,” Ricks said. “At least that’s what I told my mom so she would quit bugging me about it when I got back.”

Ricks’ loss was another man’s find.

Rocky Hamilton, an avid user of a metal detector and regular visitor to France Park, found the ring sometime between 1977 and when he passed away in March.

Soon after discovering the ring, Hamilton placed it in his box of treasures from his metal detecting expeditions. It remained there, untouched, until a few weeks ago.

While clearing out some old things from his father’s home, Alvin Hamilton and his girlfriend, Robyn Kline, noticed the ring and its intricate markings of RR while going through the box.

Despite being told they would never find its owner, Hamilton and Kline took on the challenge.

“People said that we would never find out whose ring it was, but Lewis Cass isn’t that big of a school and somebody was bound to know somebody who lost their ring,” Kline said.

“We put it on the alumni Web site with a note saying what it was and we were contacted by a gentleman from Virginia, Mike Vaughn. He said he knew a couple of guys with those initials and would contact them.”

The first person Vaughn contacted said he didn’t lose a ring, but that he thought it might be Ricks’.

Hearing that someone had posted details about a missing ring from 1977 on the alumni Web site, Ricks said he had a feeling somebody may have found it. But with his computer undergoing repairs, he could not access the site to look at the post.

“I had a couple of bites that it was coming, but I didn’t know how to get hold of them,” he said.

He need not worry.

Last Thursday, Kline made the call.

“Rick said he is a big guy and that it was a big ring, and I told him that ‘it is a big ring and it is probably yours,’” Kline said. “Sure enough when we met him last Friday he tried it on for size and it fit. It was amazing.”

Ricks said he had to send apologies to his aunt’s funeral to make the meeting, such was his desperation to be reunited with his long-lost possession — and the tightness of Kline and Hamilton’s schedule.

“I had to miss it,” he said. “While I drove out to their house, I had some old music from high school and 1977 on a CD. I felt like I was a kid again.”

When he got there all Ricks’ could think about was his mother and how worried she was about the ring when he lost it.

“When I found it, I looked up in the sky and told her that the ring that she was so worried about 32 years ago had shown up,” he said. “I told her that I didn’t know if she had a hand in it, but if you did, thank you.”

Now proudly wearing his ring, all day everyday, Ricks said that in this very special case he feels it’s time to make an exception to his long-held rule.

“God brought it back to me 32 years on,” Ricks said. “That’s why it has got to be on my finger.”

• Kevin Smith is a staff writer at the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at (574) 732-5148 or kevin.smith@pharostribune.com

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