Chris and Randie Marshall, owners of CR Diamonds and Gems, recently returned a ring found by a Gillette family to its owner in Switzerland. The ring was lost by a man snorkeling in Hawaii and was later found by a Gillette family while on vacation.
GILLETTE- Jonathan Monney was snorkeling in the clear waters of Hawaii, enjoying time spent with his new wife Diana.
After a couple of minutes underwater, a current took him farther outside of the reef and he had to make a long swim back to the shore.
"I swam a lot to go back and then I see, I lost my ring," he said. "I said, 'Oh, this is so bad.'"
The Swiss couple was in the midst of a three-week honeymoon after being married in July only a short time before.
"At the moment, I was disappointed and for one hour we tried to find it underwater," Monney said. "It was so hard trying to find it and it was not fun but life goes on."
In a stroke of luck, Monney put pictures of the missing ring on a Hawaii lost and found Facebook page, confident and hopeful that someday a miracle would happen.
"I know Facebook can do some miracles," he said. "I was confident that maybe one day someone would find it."
But what Monney wasn't expecting was the ring being found so soon, or ending up in, of all places, Gillette, Wyoming.
About two weeks ago, Randie Marshall, co-owner of CR Diamonds & Gems off Boxelder Road, came across a unique situation.
It began when a man who had vacationed with his family in Hawaii walked through the doors of the jewelry store.
"He walked in and said his family found this ring between two lava rocks by a coral reef," she said. "He'd tried to return it in Hawaii but they said essentially, finders keepers."
After coming back to Gillette, the family decided to bring what the children called "pirate treasure" into a jewelry store to see if other resources could be used to find the owners. But if the owners couldn't be found, the man would sell the ring as scrap jewelry.
In other circumstances, Marshall said reuniting a golden band with an owner would be next to impossible.
"It would be like finding a needle in a haystack," she said.
But thankfully for Monney, his ring was unique.
The golden band was engraved with his and his wife's names along with the date they were married, "09.07.2022." In Europe, dates read the day of the month, the month then the year, meaning the wedding date was July 9.
Marshall soon put her contacts in the jewelry world to work. She made a post on a Facebook page that includes 26,000 members in the jewelry community from across the world.
One of those members happened to live in Hawaii and also was a member on the lost and found page Monney had posted in, while on his honeymoon.
"She reached out and said, 'Hey, I think this has to be your guy,'" Marshall said.
Sure enough, all of the details checked out - the names, the wedding date and the golden band.
The woman in Hawaii shared Monney's contact information and Marshall reached out that day. In total, less than 24 hours had passed since she'd been told about the missing ring.
"I was a bit surprised that it was found so soon," Monney said. "In two months, someone found it. Now it's a very nice story and a bit funny and I'm so happy that Randie took my contact. She was very fair to find the person who lost the ring."
Without her, Monney said he may never have seen his ring again.
Marshall said that the credit goes to the man who brought the ring in but also the helpful jeweler community that looks out for anything and everything on the Facebook page.
"Some people think the jeweler community would be really competitive, but we really look out for each other," she said. "I knew that if anyone could find where the ring went it would be that group."
Her husband Chris also took the time to shine the ring that had incurred some scrapes and bruises from its lengthy stay on the beach and its battle against the coral reef. When it reaches the Monneys it will look like new once again.
"Swiss customs messaged me asking why I was returning an item," Marshall said. "That was kind of different."
She and Chris worked together to make sure all of the paperwork was in order to send the ring back overseas, which wasn't as easy as it sounds. As one can imagine, addresses in Europe look much different than they do in the United States and UPS doesn't normally have to ship things from Gillette to Switzerland.
The shipping label Monney sent over also had to be translated into English, since there are three common languages in Switzerland – German, French and Italian. And just as it was unique for the Marshall's to ship something to Switzerland, Monney could not believe the ring found its way to Wyoming.
"I was surprised. We have never been to Wyoming," he said. "All we knew was that it was near Canada."
"This was definitely a unique experience," Randie said. "I'm just glad we were able to find him."
Chris chalked up the journey as another of the "happy" moments they get to experience in the jewelry business.
"We get to experience a lot of the happy memories," he said. "It's the marriages and anniversaries. Obviously the ring isn't the most important thing, it's more that they were married and are happy, but finding the ring doesn't hurt."
The ring has yet to make it to the Monneys' front door, but both Randie and Monney know it has made it past customs and into the country.
In its few months of life, the ring will have traveled more than 15,000 miles – more than 7,000 each way from Hawaii to its hometown about 20 miles from Bern, Switzerland.
And it's definitely taken the route less traveled to get there.
In the next week, it will end up in the very same place it began its journey, dropped off on a doorstep where its arrival is eagerly anticipated. For everyone involved, the journey steeped in incredulity, hope and a little bit of luck turned into a happily ever after, after all.
Reader Comments(0)