Wedding Ring Unearthed, Returned After 29 Years in Time for Anniversary

Sam Roy thought he saw the edge of a quarter just barely sticking up above the dirt, glinting in the sun. His recess soccer game halted while Sam got a stick to dig it up.

"He's always been a magpie," says Sam's mom, Kari Anne Roy. When he finally got it out of the ground, however, it wasn't a quarter, it was a gold ring stuck in a clump of hard dirt. 

Sam, 10, took it to his teacher at Zilker Elementary and she washed it in the sink, revealing that it was not just a gold ring, but also had an inscription: Tom, Mollie, and a date. "It's a wedding ring!" she told Sam, returning it to him to bring home. 

"So he comes in the door with this ring on his thumb," Kari Anne says, "and told me how cool it was. He wanted to keep it, but I convinced him that it would be more fun and a big adventure to look for the owners." Sam agreed and they were on the hunt. 

First, they posted the ring to Facebook, assuming that it would belong to someone whose kids went to the school. Everyone thought the mystery was cool, but no one knew Tom and Mollie. A Facebook friend suggested that Kari Anne look up county marriage statistics online and see if she could find anyone married on the date named Tom and Mollie. It took some digging, but she found A Tom and Mollie married on that date... but was it THE Tom and Mollie? And where were they now?

Kari Anne felt stuck until she remembered that now that she had their last name she might be able to find them on Facebook. She found Mollie's page and sent her a message. And then.... nothing.

"Every day, Sam would come home from school and first thing he'd say is, 'Did she write back?'" 

But she never had. While they waited, Kari Anne and Sam had a long time to think about what it might be like when they found Tom and Mollie. Would they be happy to see the ring? Had it been thrown out deliberately? Had hearts been broken? Would it just be awkward and bring up bad memories? 

In a last-ditch effort, Kari Anne decided to do some random Googling for an actual email address. She struck gold, if you will. The address seemed to be for both Tom and Mollie ("tomollie"), so she wrote saying, "We found a ring with this inscription. Do you think it might be yours?"

She didn't have long to wait for an answer. "Praise the Lord!" came Tom's reply. 

Not only did the ring belong to him, but it had been missing for 29 years. And not only had it been missing for 29 years, but Tom and Mollie's thirty-first anniversary was five days away. 

Tom remembered that the ring had fallen off during a weekend game of catch with Mollie on the school playground. They looked for it several times, but eventually gave up. So Tom's wedding ring with the little inscription burrowed down and waited 29 years to reappear and be reunited with Tom and Mollie, whose thirty-first anniversary is today, December 4. 

Happy Anniversary, Tom and Mollie Biddison!