Lost wedding ring returned after more than a decade
One Queensland woman has been reunited with her wedding ring more than one decade after she first lost it.
Dionne Connolly lost her wedding ring while staying at Mt Isa Base Hospital on November 15, 2006.
While all wedding rings are special, this ring was particularly significant as it had first belonged to her mother and had the names of her deceased parents engraved inside.
Dionne’s parents, Gloria Connolly and Max Turner, tied the knot in 1965.
Gloria sadly passed away on June 12, 1998, and her husband died exactly four years later on June 12, 2002.
Gloria’s gold wedding ring was then handed down to Dionne’s nephew Joel, who was born on June 12.
When Dionne married her husband Adrian in 2004, Joel gifted his aunty the ring and she decided to get both her parents' names engraved inside.
The precious possession went missing two years later when Dionne was in hospital, about to give birth.
Her hands were swollen so she removed the ring from her finger and gave it to her mother-in-law, who placed it on the bedside table in Dionne’s hospital room.
However, the next morning there was no trace of the ring.
Dionne had hoped that it might be easy to track down because her parents’ names were engraved inside, but she had no luck locating it.
Around the same time, a woman named Marie-Gaye who was also living in Mt Isa, discovered a gold ring in a bin she was emptying while working at Best & Less.
Police were notified and posters were left in the windows of the store, but the message didn’t make its way to Dionne.
In 2013, Marie-Gaye’s daughter suggested that they try to locate the owner by posting a message on Facebook.
“We had no joy but a week ago my daughter asked again if anyone had claimed it and when I said no she said we should try again,” Marie-Gaye told The North West Star.
“I thought, what harm would it do?”
Finally, five years after the first Facebook post was written, one of Dionne’s family members saw the status, which had been shared more than 800 times.
Dionne was reunited with her wedding ring a decade after it went missing.
“It’s absolutely overwhelming to have such a priceless piece of family history returned after all these years,” Dionne Connolly wrote on her Facebook page, sharing a picture of the engraved ring.
“I am so very grateful and am feeling blessed.”
What is the most peculiar way you've located something that was missing? Let us know in the comments below.