All of us at some point in time have lost or misplaced something that was of great significance, whether it was accidently leaving your drivers license in the bank carrier tube in the drive thru (oops), misplacing your keys and phone just to find them magically in your pocket, or a piece of jewelry that slipped off during a weekend outing. Sometimes you find them, sometimes someone else finds them, and other times, they’re gone for good.
It’s not very often when something you lost comes back to you decades later, in this case, 41 years, and the story of how this special ring got reunited with its owner is just as priceless as the item itself.
Picture it; Amarillo, 1985. Karen McGahen is with her infant daughter Shelby on a day trip, and in between the shopping trips and getting in and out of the car, Karen’s class ring slips off undetected. It’s not until that evening after they’ve returned home to Pampa that Karen notices the ring is missing from her finger.
“We had been shopping and doing some stuff that day,” Karen said. “We had a little one, Shelby, and she wasn’t even two yet. We were taking her in and out of her car seat and at some point the ring slipped off and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t realize it until I got home that night. I thought it was gone forever.”
Not knowing exactly where it slipped off, and if it had happened somewhere in the busy city of Amarillo, it’s no wonder she never expected to see it again.
Every class ring holds an incalculable sentimental value, but this ring in particular held a much higher, familial significance, so the loss was beyond expression.
“My mother bought me this, and the stone is my grandmother’s birthstone. I got this my junior year, and my grandmother passed away on the day of my senior prom, so when I lost it, I was devastated.”
Little did Karen know that the ring had indeed been found and kept safe, the finder not knowing exactly where to even begin the search to find its owner. Sadly, the woman who found the ring passed away, but it was her daughter who indirectly inherited the ring. She took quite an interest in finding the original owner, and seeing that the ring came from Pampa, she called up an old friend and classmate who just happened to live in Pampa.
“My friend’s mother found the ring in Amarillo,” Lynnae Borger said. “She just put it in her jewelry box with the intention to try to find out who it belonged to. When she passed away, her daughter, Linn, got the ring. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and when we reconnected on Facebook and she found out that I lived in Pampa, she told me about the ring. She mailed it to me in the hopes that I could find out who it belonged to.”
Lynnae’s search would begin with a call to Jostens to maybe get a little more information about the ring, but was told that they didn’t keep records that far back (1981), and advised her to go to the school library and go through the yearbooks, using the clues on the ring to find a picture and ultimately a name. Inside the band of the ring were the initials KLM, with Deca insignia on one side and the Pampa Harvester on the other as well as the class year.
One evening, Lynnae and her husband, Mike, are having dinner with friends, Karen and Bill Bridges, and Lynnae brings up the ring and the story behind it.
“We were getting ready to go on a two-week trip, and I figured when we got back, I would head to the school and do some research. But we were having dinner with Karen and Bill the night before we left, and I told her about the ring. I told her the initials were KLM and it had Deca on it and it was class of 1981. I guess something clicked with Karen and she wanted to see if she might could find out who it belonged to.”
“I went home and got on my computer and pulled up the 1981 Harvester annual,” Karen Bridges said. “When I pulled it up, it only had parts of the annual, but one of the pages I landed on had Deca on it and it had a picture of Karen McGahen on there. I went to the index and saw that she had been in Deca for four years and was the president her senior year.”
One of Karen McGahen’s friends and classmates worked for the Bridges family for years, so Karen B., positive she found the owner, reached out to her in hopes to get ahold of Karen M.
“I messaged Karen, but I didn’t hear back from her right away, so I texted the friend and asked if she knew Karen McGahen, and she said yes. I told her that my friend Lynnae might have her class ring. She was like, ‘oh my gosh!’ I told her I had messaged Karen through Facebook Messenger but hadn’t heard back, so she said she would text her. She did and texted me back saying Karen was going to call me, and before I could finish reading the text, Karen called me,” she laughed.
Karen McGahen’s reaction upon hearing that her ring had potentially been found was that of excitement, yet optimistic disbelief.
“I was ecstatic of course, and I was in shock, disbelief. I mean, how did this show back up after 41 years? I was so grateful that God lead it back to me.”
Though Lynnae and Mike had a ton to do to get ready for their trip, they wanted to make sure Karen received the ring so she wouldn’t have to wait until they got back, which would have been an excrutiating two-week wait.
“I asked my husband if he would go pick it up from Lynnae’s,” Karen B. said. “They were final-packing for their trip and Bill ran over there to get the ring, and we brought it to Karen that next day. Everybody here at Tralee knew about the ring because the girl who opened the door asked, ‘do you have the ring?!’ I loved getting to see her reaction, and I told her we had to get a video to send to Lynnae because it’s all because of her that the ring is here.”
Karen B. did get the video, and in it, Karen M., trying her hardest to hold back tears, gives a message to Lynnae: ‘Thank you so much for reuniting me with my class ring after 41 years. I really thought this ring was lost forever. I can’t thank you enough for helping it find its way back to me.’
While there’s no way of knowing exactly where the ring was found, there’s reason to believe that it had been run over as the band was severely bent, but with a quick trip to Rheams, the band was rounded out and Karen McGahen was able to put it back on after all these years. Miraculously, nothing else about the ring was damaged, and more importantly, her grandmother’s birthstone was still intact within the ring.
There is nothing about this story that is coincidental, even down to the timing. While yes it took 41 years for the ring to make it back to its owner, Karen was able to attend her 45th class reunion just a couple of weeks ago with the ring on her finger and the story of its journey to tell.
Every single hand the ring landed in handled it with care and kept it safe, and it was through the kindness of these women without a single stake in the cause, reunited Karen back with something that could never have a price, and that, in and of itself, is priceless.
