A New Brunswick girl says she thought her “lucky rock” was gone forever after leaving it on a flight back home from B.C.
But after travelling thousands of miles back and forth, the rock made its way back to 11-year-old Georgia LeMasurier in Fredericton. And, it turned out to be a valuable one.
LeMasurier got the “rock” at a crystal shop in British Columbia, mid-drive home from the airport with her dad and grandmother.
“The thing that caught my eye is the bunch of colourful rocks,” LeMasurier said.
The girl had recently picked up rock tumbling as a hobby after watching online video tutorials, so she saw an opportunity at the Vancouver crystal shop. LeMasurier left with a bag full, but one orange-coloured rock stood out.
“When we got it, we started to tumble them,” she said.
“This one had a bunch of holes, but all the others just holes broke apart, but not this one. And then it turned into my lucky rock.”
She carried it around with her everywhere she went, including her trip back to the Maritimes. Mid-flight, LeMasurier took the rock out to hold on to it, fell asleep and forgot about it when she woke up to deplane in Halifax.
Ironically, the day she lost her “lucky rock” was on Friday the 13th (of January).
The plane she took to Halifax had already departed for London, U.K., when the family came back to the airport to look for it.
“I went all around the airport asking people couldn’t find it. I thought I’d never see it again.
“I might have cried a bit,” she said with a smile.
Her mom Erica Henderson filed a lost item report.
“I thought, ‘This is the silliest thing ever,’ but it’s my daughter’s lucky rock,” Henderson said.
On Sunday, Jan. 21, she received a phone call and test from a Nova Scotia number and it turned out to be an Air Canada employee.
“She said, ‘Did you daughter lose a rock?’ I said, ‘yes,’ and she sent me a picture,’” Henderson said.
“I was just flabbergasted.”
A rock's 'unbelievable' adventure
Georgia was still asleep at the time, so Henderson wanted to get all the facts before waking her up with the good news.
“So the rock had gone from Vancouver to Halifax, to England, to Toronto, and then came back to Halifax,” Henderson said she learned from the Air Canada employee, which works out to more than 11,000 miles in the air.
“The man who found it, he was cleaning the plane, saw this little rock and stuck it in his pocket.
“At some point, he pulled it out of his pocket and thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’ He called up his friend who’s a geologist, … and the geologist (said), ‘That’s not a rock, that’s a piece of fossilized amber.’”
The International Colored Gemstone Association says amber, which is golden-coloured fossilized pine tree resin, is usually about 25 to 50 million years old, but it can be much older.
It’s “ancient and valuable, like an antique from history,” said the website.
Henderson was in awe when she learned what Georgia’s “lucky rock” really was, as she herself has never seen it before.
“This is unbelievable, Henderson said. “Who puts in a lost item report for a rock? And then, who finds a rock and goes, ‘Oh, this must be something,’ you know?”
According to the mom, Air Canada said they would ship it to their Fredericton home with FedEx, so she immediately went to wake her daughter up. She recorded the surprise.
Georgia said she always knew her “lucky rock” was different from the others.
“I knew it was special from the beginning, but I never knew it was amber,” LeMasurier said.
She said it was nice to know someone made an effort to bring her rock back.
“I felt really happy and that there was still some really good people in the world, because it’s been going downhill quite a bit,” the 11-year-old joked.
As a mom, Henderson was also grateful.
“I felt so thankful for the man who picked it up, and then whoever got it back to the Halifax Airport. … It went through it a lot of hands to get back to where it was,” she said.
“It’s nice when good people do good things and they don’t get anything (in return).”
Though the family now has what could be a valuable little piece of history, LaMasurier still calls it her “lucky rock.”
“She doesn’t even want to get it appraised. It doesn’t matter to her what it costs,” Henderson said.
“There’s no point of getting it appraised if it’s not going to be sold,” LaMasurier added.
Unless it was worth a $50 million lottery, the girl said, it will always be just her lucky rock.
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