FACTORYVILLE, Pa. — Kevin Klatt and Brian Condel started searching for lost items by using metal detectors. The pair picked up the hobby five years ago and found all sorts of things, some even dating back to the Civil War.
On Memorial Day, Kevin and Brian decided to try out a new spot near the South Branch of Tunkhannock Creek in Wyoming County to see what they could find.
"We had gotten permission from one of the guys who works there at Keystone to search down by the river and just starting putzing around a little bit," Brian Condel said.
"Brian wasn't having any luck finding anything that day. When his metal detector went off and the signal was low, he almost didn't dig it up but he's thankful that he did.
After a quick cleaning, he realized it was a class ring with the year 1963 with a set of initials on the inside.
"We knew it was from Abington Heights. It was a woman's ring and Kevin was able to get the yearbook and found the only woman that had the initials there and then I found her niece on Facebook," Brian said.
The ring belonged to Carol Ann Shamonsky who attended Keystone College in the late 1960s.
Kevin says the world got smaller when he noticed he had mutual friends of her niece and reached out to his friends to help connect them to Carol's family.
"We found her aunt's high school class ring from 1963 and want to get it back to her so he messaged her and told her and then said tell Brian to get in touch with her," Kevin said.
Last weekend, Kevin and Brian drove up to New York State to deliver the ring to Carol's brother Anthony.
"It was very exciting, and it was very rewarding to be able to give something back. That thing was in the ground longer than I was alive, I think, and we were able to find it and give it back to her so that's pretty cool," Brian said.
Carol is still alive in the Philadelphia area and her brother plans to surprise her with the ring for her birthday in August.