Seven Years Later, Missing Class Ring Returned To Rightful Owner
After finding a 1955 class ring from Michigan State University in the lost and found of a Plymouth restaurant, a Bourne man went above and beyond to unite the ring with the family of its late owner seven years after it went missing.
Brian Riley was with his son at Aroma Tavern and Grill in Plymouth, which is owned by a friend of his, when his son found a ring in a lost and found drawer in the restaurant’s office.
“The ring must have been lost there or somehow made its way there about seven years ago,” Mr. Riley said. “They put Facebook postings up and tried to see if they could find anybody, but they were unsuccessful and it just kind of ended up in this drawer.”
Mr. Riley said that his friend said his son could have the ring if he wanted it, as attempts to find its owner over the years had yielded no results.
“When I saw the ring, I just couldn’t do that,” Mr. Riley said, “because you could tell that that ring was worn every day for years.”
As it turned out, his hunch was right.
Seven years earlier, Gary Simmons, a Plymouth resident, went to an appointment for cataract treatment. After the appointment, he and his family realized that the ring had been lost at some point during the day.
Lisa Simmons, Gary’s daughter, said the 1955 class ring was a point of pride for her father.
“He played football at Michigan State,” she said in an interview with the Enterprise. “He was really proud of it and, when he developed Alzheimer’s, it became something that was always on his hand. He was always talking about it; it was like a point of conversation for him.”
When they realized the ring was lost, Ms. Simmons said she and her family were distraught. They retraced their steps over and over, but never found the ring. Mr. Simmons died six years ago, and Ms. Simmons said the lost ring remained something that she and her family lamented even after he was gone.
But that all changed a few weeks ago when she got a call from a woman at the Michigan State alumni office, saying someone had found her father’s ring.
“I was so confused,” Ms. Simmons said, “because she’s calling from Michigan about a ring that’s been missing for seven years. She said there was a gentleman named Brian who had found it at Aroma in Plymouth, and I know my dad and mom used to go there a lot. He liked their soups, so…I’m like, this is plausible.”
As it turns out, Mr. Riley had set out on his own to find the ring’s owner. He posted pictures on the Plymouth Residents Facebook page and included details that proved to be key in finding who it belonged to: it said class of 1955 and was engraved with the initials GMS.
Mr. Riley was put in touch with someone from the MSU alumni office and, using the initials and graduating year, they were able to determine who the rightful owner was and contact Ms. Simmons.
“He was the only one with those three initials in that graduating year,” she said.
Ms. Simmons, who lives in Carver, was able to get in touch with Mr. Riley and arrange a time where she and her stepmother, Maryjane Simmons, could meet him to get the ring back. Finally, in mid-October, the seven-year search came to a happy ending when the family was reunited with Mr. Simmons’s beloved ring.
“My mother and I,—oh my gosh, we were so excited to see it,” Ms. Simmons said. “It’s pretty cool that he went out of his way like that [and] the fact that he realized it was something that must have been precious to someone and he went the extra mile.”
For Mr. Riley, however, he was just doing what felt right.
“[If] someone that wears a college ring like that, they obviously cherished that ring,” he said. “It just was too sentimental. My son would’ve lost that in a week, it was just too much of a shame to do that. Obviously somebody cared a lot about it, and it’s nice to be able to get it back to the family.”
“A little act of kindness can mean an awful lot,” Ms. Simmons said, “and it did for us.”