Long-lost ring makes surprising return
Katie Powers never noticed when a diamond ring slipped from her finger a decade ago.
But once it did, the Pennsauken woman couldn’t escape a nagging question: What happened to that 14-karat gold keepsake, a treasured heirloom in her husband’s family since 1914?
“I felt terrible, especially losing something my husband’s side of the family had given me,” said Powers, who’d been married less than a year when the ring went missing in September 2006.
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“I checked everywhere,” she told me. “I never stopped.”
“At first I thought I lost it in a diaper,” said Powers, who had an infant daughter at the time. “But I’d also been out the night before with my sister-in-law, so we checked her car.”
“And then, throughout the years I kept looking.”
Powers scrutinized mattresses, scoured drawers and repeatedly scanned the yard of her Toms Avenue home.
“When we had work done on our house, I had them check the pipes,” said Powers. “I looked in the mounds of snow.”
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“It was rough the whole 10 years,” she confided, noting some people suspected she might have sold the ring.
Of course, you’re expecting now to hear how Powers finally found the family jewel.
Except she never did.
For that part of the story, we switch over to Tom Flythe, a family friend with a hobby.
“I am very passionate about metal detecting,” said Flythe, a 39-year-old technician who builds optical assemblies for robots.
That’s right. For all those years, Powers had been making a critical mistake — looking at her lawn, instead of under it.
Flythe, who likes to search around people’s homes, saw promising territory in the Powers’ post-war neighborhood off Browning Road.
“The whole area is kind of old (and) all those houses were built on farmland,” he observed. “There were farmers out there every day, dropping change and losing buttons.”
“I have a lot of cool buttons.”
So, during a recent visit, Flythe asked if he could check the yard. Powers’ husband Jeff said yes, and some time later the metal detector said beep.
The ring was about two inches below the surface.
"Usually things will sink down through the soil due to the rain," explained Flythe, adding grass clippings also help to bury lost objects.
“Their son (also Jeff) was helping me and he saw the ring, grabbed it and just ran off with it,” recalled Flythe. “He showed it to his father, and he couldn’t believe it.“
Katie Powers, who wasn’t home at the time, received a cryptic text: “You’ll never guess what they found in the front yard.”
“I said, ‘my ring!’ and nobody would respond.”
Recalled Flythe, "The moment Katie got home … and saw the ring, there was no doubt it was the one she lost." He could tell by her smile.
“I look at it in amazement now," said Powers, who works at a Marlton car dealership. “It's gorgeous. It feels good to have it back.”
At the same time, she's looking forward to shedding the ring in the future — when her daughter Taylor, now 10, gets married.
“I can’t wait to say, ‘This is yours.’"
Jim Walsh's column runs in print Fridays. Reach him at jwalsh@gannettnj.com or (856) 486-2646.