Like most beachcombers, my goal is simple: to find a perfect shell or sand dollar, an old coin, pretty beach glass, a message in a bottle. What I don’t expect to find is a high school class ring.
Five years ago, while sitting on the Back River Beach on Tybee Island, GA., we found a man’s high school class ring. I figured if we turned it over to the authorities, the ring would be lost somewhere in a storage room. If it had been mine, I’d want to locate it.
The ring bore the name of a Savannah high school, the owner’s graduation year and icons representing two of his activities – music and baseball. On the inside were his initials.
Because of my journalism background, I was used to asking questions and I’ll admit, naturally snoopy. I located the high school’s website and the baseball coach’s email address. He immediately identified the owner – he’d coached him – and contacted him by text. Within a few hours, the owner had texted me and we arranged a meeting on Tybee. Turns out he’d lost the ring while sitting on the beach a few days earlier.
It was a great way to make a new friend and I still have the picture my husband took of the two of us. Five years later, I still follow him via his website and Facebook page – he’s a successful Savannah wedding DJ.
Fast forward to 2021 and a one-year-late 40th wedding celebration on Tybee. I’d done the usual beachcombing, which resulted in finding both an intact - still soft - sand dollar and a starfish.
Later in the day, while swimming, my husband suddenly realized he was missing our door key. We searched the beach but never found it, so returned to the condo where – lucky for us – the owner, who lives upstairs, located a spare. We had a new key made and returned the spare and figured that was the end of the story, but walking to the beach the next afternoon, we found a $20 bill on the sandy road and cheered – it covered the cost of the key (plus)! There was no one around who could have lost it so we felt okay keeping the money.
That evening, we went out for a walk on the beach. My husband jokingly told a woman and her four kids that if they found a key ring with two keys on it, there was a $5 reward for them. About 15 minutes later, we heard running feet. The three older kids – a teenager and his little sisters – had found the key while playing in the water. We were stunned – what were the chances? We had no money with us and they insisted a reward wasn’t necessary – we disagreed so we ran back to the condo and decided to give them the found $20 bill.
It was totally worth it – we made three kids very happy and made four new friends. From their mom, we learned that they’d recently moved from Rhode Island to Tybee – her husband’s family lived there and he’d begun a new job in the fire/emergency department.
The lost had been found. Proof once again that most people are basically honest.
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