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Courtesy of Brent Aguirre
The class ring that Brent Aguirre lost more than 45 years ago.
Brent Aguirre hasn't been on Facebook long, but he's already skeptical of emails from strangers. So when he got a unusual message a few months ago from a couple he didn't know, the Air Force employee just ignored it.
"They said they had something I might be interested in," Aguirre told msnbc.com from his home in Ogden, Utah. “You don't know whether you can trust things like that."
Fortunately, the couple didn't give up. "About three weeks later they emailed back and told me they had a class ring with my name on it.”
Aguirre, 63, had long given up hope that he would ever be reunited with the keepsake, a gift from his parents more than 45 years ago during his senior year. The 1966 graduate of Bonneville High School had managed to wear the ring for only about six months before losing it.
“It was shocking,” said the Vietnam war veteran. “I had written that thing off years ago.”
He had always thought the ring, which is gold with a blue stone in the middle, was at the bottom of the Pineview Reservoir, a popular hangout then among teens, just east of Ogden. He remembers his mom was especially disappointed when he lost it.
“Mom and dad spent good money on it,” he said. “It’s a beautiful ring.”
Courtesy of Brent Aguirre
Brent Aguirre lost his class ring more than 45 years ago and was thrilled when a Sandy, Utah, couple returned it to him.
That’s exactly what John and Nancy Boswell thought too, when they found the ring while cleaning out a desk drawer in their Sandy, Utah, home last fall. Engraved with Brent Aguirre’s name on the inside, they set out to find its owner, finally making the connection via Facebook.
“We wanted to give it to him personally, so we wrote him a note,” John Boswell told msnbc.com. The retired admissions director for the University of Utah can’t remember exactly where or when he found the keepsake, but believes he picked it up from the grass while walking into a high school one day.
He didn’t think about it again, until seeing the ring in the drawer last fall.
The Friday before New Year’s, after several more emails and phone calls, the Boswells were able to hand deliver the ring to Aguirre at a restaurant in St. George.
“It was extremely satisfying,” Boswell said. “He was thrilled to get it back.”
The ring no longer fits on Aguirre’s finger, but he doesn’t mind. He just wishes his mother was around to enjoy the moment with him. “She’d probably be more excited than me,” he said. “She was disappointed when I lost it.”
Aguirre’s twin sister, however, is trying to make sure he doesn't lose it again. “She wants to re-size it for me for my birthday, which is next month,” he said.
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