A retired gas station worker who found a school ring while cleaning a women’s restroom decades ago is now one step closer to returning it to its rightful owner.
Johnny Ward found the ring with a pinkish-red stone in the early 1990s, while working at an Irving gas station in Glenholme, N.S.
For years, Ward says he kept the ring behind the gas station counter, hoping that someone would come and claim it. No one ever did.
After the gas station shut down nearly 20 years ago and Ward retired, he brought the ring home.
His girlfriend recently prompted him to try again to find the owner. “She found it and looked it over and said ‘maybe somebody might like to have that back’,” he says.
There are a few clues on the ring, but Ward has never used a computer so he couldn’t search online. Instead, he called CTV Atlantic to ask for help solving the mystery.
The ring says Brewer High School 1980 and has a photo of a witch. It turns out there’s a Brewer High School in Brewer, Maine, about 600 kilometres away. The school’s mascot is a witch.
The other big clue is the engraving: C.A.J.
According to a 1980 Brewer High School yearbook stored at the local library, there was one female graduate in 1980 whose initials were C.A.J.
School officials are now in the process of trying to contact the woman, although they point out that it might not be easy if her surname has changed.
Still, Ward is pleased to be one step closer to finding the ring’s owner. He says he’s “sure whoever owns it would like to have it back.”
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Dan MacIntosh
