Owner, class ring reunited after 28 years
Published: April 16, 2007
What are the chances? Twenty-eight years ago, someone stole Debbie Brown Emerson’s South Albany High School class ring. A little over a week ago, she got it back.
“This is really just astonishing,” she said. “I was devastated at the time because I’d paid $200 for it. I thought that I’d never see it again.”
On March 26, Emerson, who is on the Front Street Tavern pool team, was playing at Lucky Larry’s off Highway 20 in Albany. Near the pool tables, Penny Moon was sitting at a poker machine.
Emerson and Moon began talking to each other and found out they were SAHS classmates, members of the Class of 1980.
“When I told her my maiden name, Penny started jumping up and down and she started screaming,” Emerson said. “She kept saying, ‘I have your class ring. Did you lose it? I found it in the parking lot where the swimming pool is now.’”
It turns out Moon was in the parking lot a few months after the ring was stolen, and there it was on the ground. Moon picked it up and then asked two people in her class who had the initials DB, the same ones appearing inside the ring, if the ring belonged to them.
Because Moon didn’t know Emerson, she didn’t ask her about the ring.
Moon kept the ring all these years for sentimental reasons. She said she lacked credits to graduate with her class, but “I held on to it for personal reasons, and I cherished it.” Moon never wore it but kept it in her jewelry box.
Once Moon realized about 9:30 p.m. that Monday that she had the ring’s owner right in front of her, she drove to her home in Scio and returned to Lucky Larry’s that same night with the ring.
“It took me two days to wipe the smile off my face after I’d given it back,” she said.
Now Emerson, who owns Sure-Flow, an industrial vacuuming service in Albany, is wearing her ring.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to wear it, but I’ll wear it for a while because of the newness of it,” she said.
Emerson recalled buying the ring in her junior year.
It was stolen from items she and her father, Dave Brown, had carried over early in their move to a new four-plex.
Because Emerson’s boyfriend at the time did not want her to go without a ring, he bought one for her.
“It just wasn’t the same,” she said.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: