Decades later, ring found

GRACE, Idaho – It took Randy Lester two years of work to save up the money for his North Gem High School class ring, and only six months to lose it.

The 1967 graduate was devastated when the ring disappeared during a day spent cleaning an old dairy farm in Grace. In those days, $189 was a lot of money, he said.

But now, nearly four decades later, the ring is back on Lester’s finger, a gift from a woman who found the jewelry in her garden bed.

From the day he lost it at the dairy farm, he never really gave up finding the ring, Lester said.

When the dairy farm was sold years later, Lester talked to the new owners, asking them to contact him if they found the ring.

Though they never found it, they did haul several loads of rich soil to a farm five miles away.

“I believe the lady wanted to build flower beds,” Lester said.

But the ring remained undiscovered for several more years, and eventually that property also sold. When JoLin Bowen moved to the farm, she decided she would get rid of the elevated flower beds, and in June her mother, Jenny Hall, decided to take some of the soil for her own garden in Soda Springs.

Hall was weeding two weeks ago when the ring surfaced.

“I could read North Gem and the year. I knew it was a man’s ring from the size. The initials were a little harder to make out, but it looked like R.L.,” Hall said.

She asked her co-workers at Monsanto if they knew anyone who had lost a ring, and one man offered to bring in his sister’s North Gem High School yearbook from 1967.

It was a small school with only about 30 people in the class of 1967. Only two students had the initials R.L. – Randy Lester and his twin brother, Reed – and Reed had eventually graduated from another school.

Hall called Randy Lester to let him know she’d found his ring.

Lester was surprised and happy about the find, he said. He plans to have the ring reshaped and will wear it often.

“I guess I was just supposed to have this ring,” he said.