Were you married in 1957? Did you lose your wedding ring on a beach in White Rock, B.C.? Chris Turner is hoping he can make your day.
Turner calls himself the “ring finder.” He recovers lost jewelry and tries to reunite it with its owners. Earlier this week a search turned up a plain gold wedding band with an inscription on it, triggering a memory.
He was with a friend several years ago and “a lady came up to (his friend) and asked for help, and said she’d lost her ring at the part of the beach he was searching,” Turner told Global News. The was plain gold with a date inscribed on it.
“I’ve been hunting that beach for years and always in the back of my mind I though of that ring, but I never found it. Just four days ago I found a plain gold wedding band.”
The owner gave her contact information, but it’s been lost. Turner is hoping she’ll see this story and get in touch with him.
“It may not look special, but that’s a story. That’s somebody’s ring with a year, a day and a month. The year is 1957. … I’m hoping this is her ring,” he said.
Turner said he’s found more than 600 rings over the years, and he maintains an online directory where metal detecting specialists can list items they’ve found in the hope of returning them with their owners.
His worldwide network of volunteers, theringfinders.com has returned more than 5,000 rings.
Recently, Turner made headlines when he located a lost wedding ring belonging to actor Jon Cryer, on Vancouver’s seawall. Cryer plays Lex Luthor on TV’s Supergirl.
“These rings have beautiful stories attached to them and they end abruptly and people can’t stop thinking of them. I’ve had people reach out to me and tell me they lost a ring 25 years ago, and they’re still thinking of their ring.
“Once you return it, once you go: ‘Here you go.’ And you see that smile, you see how it affects their lives. I don’t want to do anything more than do this. I’m trying to find a way to do this full-time because I love this job. It’s the best job in the world.”
Turner says all the ring’s owner will need to do to get it back is correctly identify the exact date inscribed on the inside of the wedding band.