Tim and Joan Connell have been married for 51 years.
For 51 years, Joan has faithfully worn her wedding ring – a modest yet elegant gold and silver band with intricate detailing, and gone about her day, attending to whatever’s on her agenda.
Unfortunately, Joan’s daily ritual was disrupted in November when she misplaced her wedding band.
To put it simply, Joan was crushed.
In the past year, the ring had gradually loosened, yet Joan remained true to her routine and never removed it.
On that fateful day in early November, she discovered it was no longer on her finger.
That day, Joan left her home in Carman and went to town. She had a list of errands to complete and went to several places in Carman, Winkler, and Morden, doing shopping before Christmas.
After a busy day of running errands, she stopped at the pharmacy in Carman to fill her prescription. It was then that she realized her ring was no longer on her finger. Instantly, a wave of panic set in and she began revisiting all the spots she had visited earlier.
“I came home and ripped my bed apart, and took my garbage bag out and took it apart, and looked in the garbage, and backtracked to all the places I had been that day, and couldn’t find my ring,” said Joan.
She phoned multiple places she had been, leaving messages and talking to different people, hoping somebody had found her precious ring and turned it in. She even travelled back to many places she had gone, searching for the ring herself, but to no avail.
Fifty-one years, and now her ring was gone.
The weeks went by, and nothing.
“I had kind of given up hope,” Joan said.
In Joan’s mind, her wedding ring was gone forever.
On Dec. 19, while running some last-minute Christmas errands, as Joan often does looking for treasures, she stopped at Carman MCC Thrift Shop for a few minutes.
Suddenly, out the corner of her eye, she saw something she recognized. In the display case by the counter was her wedding ring… with a price sticker on it.
The staff that found it wasn’t aware that it had been reported lost, so they put a price tag on it, and into the display case it went.
Excitement filled the room, and the staff returned her ring to Joan without charge.
“That ring was meant to come back to you,” the staff told her.
Something so precious and significant to Joan, her wedding ring, had finally returned back to her, and she received the best Christmas present anyone could have ever given her. Joan offers many thanks to Carman MCC Thrift Shop.
But the story doesn’t end there.
A few days later, after getting her ring back, Joan returned to Carman MCC Thrift Shop, chatting with some staff about how her ring had shown up. One of the staff chimed in and told Joan they could add to that story.
Around five to six weeks ago, when Joan lost her ring, a little boy and his mother entered the shop. The little boy had a hurt finger, so he put on a glove support he found in the store. But when he pulled it off, a ring was in the glove.
When Joan was there on Dec. 19, she tried on the same glove, but her ring had slid off and was left inside the glove, and left in there, unnoticed.
Later, when the boy found it inside that same glove, he and his mom returned the ring to the staff, not knowing it had been reported missing.
Joan said she is very grateful to the young boy that he was honest enough to hand the ring in.
“It meant so much to me to get it back,” she said.
Joan is so grateful to have her ring back that she urges the young boy to come forward so she can give him a little reward for being so honest and handing in the ring.
“After wearing this ring for 51 years, it is very sentimental for me,” she said, “now I’m very careful when I go out.”
Whoever you are, if you were the boy who returned the wedding ring to the Carman MCC Thrift Store staff, please come into the store and come forward. Joan would love to give her thanks for returning her precious treasure.
