Class reunion: Lost high school ring returned after 37 years

After 37 years, David Mitchell, proud Fighting Coyote of the Shelby High School Class of 1970, has his lost class ring back on his finger just in time for the 40-year reunion.

“It fits pretty good now,” he said with a laugh. “I’m 100 pounds heavier.”

Mitchell, who now lives in Kalispell, never knew how or where he lost the ring that was sized too large to stay put. He tried wrapping tape around the ring to keep it on his rail-thin finger but that didn’t do the trick.

“I know I didn’t have it in 1974,” Mitchell said.

That was the year he wanted to give it to a special girlfriend and found his ring missing. Years went by and he never gave the missing memento much thought until an amazing e-mail arrived on May 14 from a stranger in Illinois named Shelley Warner.

“My dad found a high school ring. The stone is red, dated 1970, Shelby High School, Fighting Coyotes, and on the inside is engraved (with) the initials DM,” Warner wrote.

Her dad, Phil Warner, came across the ring about 25 years ago when he was raking out a drain at a car wash he owned in Thomasboro, Ill. His first thought was that it belonged to an airman at the nearby Chanute Air Force Base.

After several unsuccessful attempts to find the owner of the gold ring with a red stone, he stored the ring in his desk drawer at United Fuel Co., another business he owned. Shelley Warner, vice president of United, rediscovered the ring about two years ago while cleaning out her dad’s desk for a move to new headquarters.

She was intrigued and wanted to help her dad reunite the ring and owner.

Using her Internet skills, Warner began a quest to unmask the mysterious D.M. and find Shelby High School. Before long, she discovered that the only Shelby High School sporting the Fighting Coyotes mascot was in Montana.

 Her first contact with Shelby High School ended in frustration when school officials cited privacy concerns and refused to provide names of class members with the initials D.M. Warner soon devised a cunning plan to hack into the Coyote pack.

Warner found the Shelby High School alumni website on the Internet.

“She registered there as part of the class of 1970,” he said. “When I registered there, she e-mailed me.”

Warner’s persistence did not payoff immediately. Mitchell wrote back to her that he had lost his ring but he had never been in Illinois so it couldn’t possibly belong to him. He offered to try and help locate the only other classmate with the initials D.M. who might own the ring.

She responded with gratitude, saying “Dad would just explode if we could find its true owner.”

Mitchell forwarded a copy of his e-mail exchanges with Warner in which he reports to Warner that he sent a message to the other D.M. in his Shelby High School class of 1970. Within a day or two of his first e-mail exchange, the rusty recesses of his memory began to churn as he mulled the ring mystery over and over.

On May 16, he wrote:

“I stated earlier that I had never been to Illinois. But I just recalled that in April of, I believe it was 1973, I made a road trip with my family members going to my brother’s wedding in Massachusetts. I believe we passed through parts of Illinois.”

In April, the roads were slushy with ice and snow and Mitchell speculated they may have stopped to wash their truck and camper. Another day passed and he remembered his family rerouting their trip to bypass Chicago’s traffic as well as stopping somewhere to put a new set of points in their truck.

He received no response from the other D.M. and the wheels kept turning, trying to go back 37 years. Warner offered to send pictures but Mitchell asked her to hold off to first let him try to recall some details that she hadn’t provided in earlier e-mails.

Color was not a good clue because he remembered that the class voted for everyone to have a red ring. Mitchell said they did have a choice of a smooth or faceted stone and that he chose faceted.

“Also, my ring was too big for my finger, they did a lousy job of measuring,” he wrote in a May 17 e-mail. “It was always trying to slip off my finger.”

Mitchell gave her the go-ahead to send photos to see “if it makes the hair on the back of my neck stick up.” On May 20, he got the first look at the photo of the ring. 

His reply conveyed the emotion he felt looking at the photo on his computer screen.

“Amazing, absolutely amazing — from something that I almost blew off as an impossibility to what I am seeing now, almost leaves me speechless in fact it does. I am having a hard time finding the words to write this. I am convinced that it is the same ring that somehow slipped from my finger 37 years ago.”

Warner wrote back that she had goose bumps reading his reply and agreed to ship it to him at Northern Energy in Kalispell. In a curious coincidence, Mitchell works in the same type of fuel distribution business as Warner and her father.

The ring completed its journey back to Mitchell in Montana on May 20. Mitchell wrote back, in a flight of whimsy, that magical things happened when he slipped that high school ring on his finger.

“I lost almost 100 lbs; I again had a full head of hair with no gray; the bags under my eyes and all my wrinkles disappeared; I could run faster and jump higher than I have been able to in years. I again felt like I was 10-feet tall and bullet-proof. And I was really smart like I was in 1973, I knew it all.”

Warner had the perfect comedic comeback.

“If I had known that the ring would do all of that, I would have kept it!”

 The magic moment passed returning Mitchell’s finger to a perfect fit for the Shelby High School ring ordered 40 years ago. But he doesn’t plan to wear it often for fear of losing what has become a treasure to him.

He said he wants to pass it on to his children and grandchildren with the story about the two people in Illinois who cared enough to safeguard and return a stranger’s ring.

Mitchell wrote in an e-mail to Warner that he wanted his children and grandchildren to learn from this that a simple unselfish act may not seem like much at the moment but it takes on a whole new meaning for the recipient.

“This is what you and your dad’s actions have done for me and I will cherish that as much as the treasure of the ring,” he wrote. “Price of a class ring in 1970 (was) about $40; price of that same ring today — priceless.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.