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| The family heirloom |
By Al Rodriguez
(Second of two parts)
When I wrote about my daughter’s engagement, that was only part of the story. Here's the rest:
When Nicole's fiancé, Andrew, told us he was going to propose to her, we suggested she might be happy with a family heirloom as the engagement ring that had belonged to my wife Elizabeth’s great-grandmother. It was a lovely piece with multiple stones that just dazzled when one looked at it.
When he proposed, Nicole said yes, cried with joy over the family ring and we soon went off to a local jeweler to get it repaired and properly fitted. She told us it seemed a bit loose so we encouraged her to go back to the jeweler to have it further adjusted. The jeweler told her that it was just the winter cold (what little we have in Santa Barbara) that was causing it to slip and once the summer heat arrived her fingers would swell a bit and improve the fit of the ring.
We toyed with the idea of getting insurance for it but that seemed so practical and business-like, and feeling reassured by the jeweler, we passed. Nicole and my wife went off to happily run errands for a snow trip we were going off to the next day.
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| Al and Nicole |
They were getting into the car after one of their many stops that day when Nicole noticed that her ring, the sparkling family heirloom that served as the testimonial to the engagement, had disappeared off of her hand. Where was it? Where had it fallen off? Who knew!
So, her mother and friends combed store parking lots and aisles; they badgered store managers to look through their lost and found bins; they went dumpster diving for trash bags. Nothing.
Notices offering a reward were posted in newspapers and on Craigslist; posters were handed out to pawn shops; police reports were filed. Still nothing.
Guilt, desperation and despair... my daughter’s heart was broken and she felt soooooo guilty for having lost this one connecting thread to the marital bliss within her mother’s family tree.
Then, a week later, she got a text asking “how much $$ 4 da ring?”
Turned out the ring had been found in a grocery store parking lot. We learned that a woman and her daughter found the ring in the parking lot. But, the mother didn’t want to give the ring up; the woman, her husband and daughter argued for a week over whether to sell, return or keep the ring.
We’ll never know if it was greed or need that prevailed but at that point, who cared? The exchange (a cash reward for the ring) was made in a laundromat, with an off-duty law enforcement officer friend present. The ring was back on her finger in all its sparkling glory!
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| Andrew, Nicole and the lost-and-found ring |
Al Rodriguez lives in Santa Barbara, California. He is the executive director of a nonprofit agency and serves as an active board member for other organizations.