This man’s high school ring survived not only the sands of time, but also literal sand.
WLOX reports that a class ring belonging to Darien Ladner was discovered buried in the beaches of Pass Christian, Mississippi, 44 years after it was lost in 1982 when he was just 18 years old.
“I felt the ring when it fell off my finger, and I said ‘uh oh’ so we all got down there and started digging in the sand trying to find it, and what that did was make it go deeper,” Ladner recalls. “Even had an assistant principal from the school volunteer to go help me with a metal detector. Well, in 1982, they didn’t have the metal detectors like they have now. This thing here would beep on a rock. So we just gave up.”
Fast-forward to the year 2026, when the aptly named Sammy Jewell was strolling the beach with a much more modern metal detector and came across the ring.
“It was pretty obvious that it was, you know, kind of when I brushed the sand off of it, it was full of sand, that it was a graduation ring,” Jewell says. “And I immediately realized that I could probably find the owner.”
That he did, and the ring was reunited with Ladner.
“I was ecstatic, I couldn’t believe it, because it’s been 44 years,” Ladner says.