Some 33 years after Rhonda Cable Mayberry lost her Class of 1980 ring from Jacksonville's Ed White High School, a stranger called with good news on Sunday morning. She'd found the ring.
Mayberry said she and her husband had just been talking about the ring with a blue stone and her name engraved inside. They started screaming. Later she recalled how she'd only had the ring a few weeks when she lost it while at a friend's house in Jacksonville.
"I was brokenhearted. It was the first nice thing I had ever gotten," said Mayberry, who now lives in Schertz, Texas, said. "I've never forgotten it."
She's getting it back, thanks to a little detective work by Amy M. Lee of Jacksonville.
Lee told Mayberry that her husband, David Lee, found the ring while digging in their backyard about seven years ago. She tried then to track down the ring's owner using clues engraved in the ring. She was unsuccessful and put the ring in her jewelry box.
On Sunday, Lee's 5-year-old daughter, Kady, saw the ring and asked about it. Lee decided to try again to find its owner.
"I didn't have anything going on," she told the Florida Times-Union. "I said I'm going to find this lady."
It took three hours, but she eventually found that Rhonda Cable was not Rhonda Mayberry. She located a phone number, and dialed it. That's when the screaming began.
Mayberry told Lee how upset she'd been when she lost the ring. And that she married her high school sweetheart, Randy Mayberry, who graduated from Ed White in 1976. He was in the Air Force.
Mayberry said she'll always be grateful for Lee's persistence.
"I think that's great. That's the same thing I would have done," she said. "It's good to see people out there like that. It gives me hope."
For her part, Lee said she hopes if she ever loses anything of similar value that someone out there would track her down.
On Tuesday, Lee and her daughters -- Kady and Allison, 8 -- packed the ring in a box and mailed it to Texas.
"If you find something that has someone's name in it, there is not any other option," she said.
