Hero reunited with lost heirloom ring
Published: May 25, 2005
Retired Firefighter Michael Lofaro was reunited last night with the precious keepsake he’d inherited from his firefighter dad - and which he thought was lost - thanks to another big-hearted New Yorker named Harry Packman.
“I never dreamed this ring would be found,” said Lofaro, 79, of Lake Grove, L.I.
Lofaro, who winters in Florida, had taken the auto-train north and was waiting at the station in Lawton, Va., for his car to be unloaded when he lost the ring on May 6.
“I was washing up in the men’s room and it must have slipped off,” he said. “I looked for the ring and it was hopeless. There were so many people in the station.”
With a heavy heart, Lofaro drove home unaware that Packman, an 86-year-old former Brooklynite, had stumbled across the ring - and was already looking for its rightful owner.
Packman, retired and living in Pembroke Pines, Fla., said he knew where to start because of the inscription: “Presented by officers + members of Eng. 282 H + L. 148 to Lieut. J. Lofaro 8-1-38.”
Packman said he gave it to his son in New Jersey and told him, “We gotta get it back to the right guy - he’s an old-timer.”
Two weeks and a flurry of phone calls later, Lofaro was standing in the Borough Park firehouse where he had worked for 27 years - and where his father had worked - with Packman and the ring.
Packman said he was glad to help out Lofaro, but still a little surprised to “find out I’m older than him.”
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