SYDNEY - When Glenda O’Brien lost the friendship ring given to her by her teenage sweetheart in 1974, she never expected to see it again.
But thanks to a man and his metal detector, Ms O’Brien has been reunited with her precious gift, lost for almost half a century.
“Because it meant so much back then and time makes you forget things, when I put it back on it brings memories of when he gave it to me,” she said.
“We knew that we would end up together for the rest of our lives, and here we are the ring has come back to us. Jason Kemp from Nerang had only been seriously metal detecting as a hobby for three months when his machine signalled something.
He dug down about 20 centimetres and discovered a gold ring with an inscription in it. “I was pretty excited. It was the first gold ring I found, so I was pretty stoked with that,” he said.
“It was a good, solid, chunky ring, and then I saw the engraving on the inside dated 1971.
“I thought ‘Wow, this is pretty old,’ and it had the couple’s names in there: ‘To Glenda love Phillip.’”
Kemp was going to put the ring in a cabinet with his other finds but decided to turn to social media first to see if its original owner was out there.
Within two days of his post on the Gold Coast Community Facebook Page, Ms O’Brien contacted Mr Kemp with details of where and how she had lost the ring. From “Harry Potter” books to Pokémon cards, here are some childhood treasures which might fetch a lump sum amount on online portals.
“I didn’t tell anyone where I exactly found it,” Mr Kemp said.
“I just said ‘on the the Gold Coast,’ and she came to me with her story of where she lost it, and ‘I was like yep, it was 100 per cent yours.’”
Ms O’Brien said she was emotional when she learned her ring had been found.
“I just saw the ring and started crying because I knew it was my ring,” she said.
The friendship ring was given to her by her partner Phillip.
“Back then it was like ‘will you go with me’ and that was when a friendship ring was given, so we went and picked out this friendship ring and Phil had it engraved for me,” she said.
“The meaning to that ring was the commitment to each other.
“It meant a lot to me because I was so young back then, we fell in love at first sight I was 14 and he was 16.