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CBS2 Exclusive: Lost Ring Reunited With Owner More Than 25 Years Later

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A gold ring missing for more than a quarter century finds its way back to its owner just in time for Christmas.

As CBS2's Lou Young reported exclusively, the ring arrived two weeks before Christmas at the jewelry store on Palmer Avenue in Larchmont after a woman moving to Yonkers found it under a rug in her new apartment there.

"She found it, she didn't need it; it had no significance to her, so we bought it ready to melt and thought about it," said Steven Wallach with Wallach Jewelry Designs.

Wallach's wife Gina pulled it from the scrap pile and started working on the 10 karate gold 1971 class ring from Herricks High School on Long Island.

First, she went to Facebook.

"It wouldn't let me post anything unless I became a member, so I became a member," she said.

Then Gina asked for help, which came in the form of a yearbook delivered by a local woman who had graduated from Herricks but wasn't missing a ring.

The engraved initials on the ring were the best clue.

"There were five women in that school who had the first and last initials D.G., but only one who had the middle initial R and here she was living in Larchmont," Gina said.

Turns out the Herricks grad from that year living half a mile from the store with the maiden name Diane R. Geberth, fitting the initials, has no idea how the ring got to Westchester.

"Haven't seen it since we left Connecticut in 1985. (And it turned up in Yonkers?) That's what we're told and we have no connection with Yonkers so I don't know," said Diane Hall, the ring's owner.

Think about it. The ring goes from Nassau County, Long Island to Stamford, Connecticut to Yonkers, New York before finally reuniting with its former owner in an entirely different town. The odds are astronomical, Young reported.

"Just imagine all the jewelry stores between Yonkers and here. This person could've dropped it off at any one of them," said Hall.

"That's a Christmas miracle if I ever heard one," Gina said.

And the ring is actually more meaningful for Hall and her husband than anyone ever imagined.

"We were going steady when we were seniors in high school," she said. "So it means a lot in that regard. It does make it very special. Russell's ring went missing at the same time so if anyone has Russell's ring???"

The Wallachs paid cash for the ring for the value of its gold, but refused to accept any payment from Hall. Under the circumstances, they said it didn't seem right.

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