Facebook Connects Ring Lost in the Ocean to Australian Man
— -- An Australian man who lost a sentimental ring while swimming off the coast of Bali nine months ago has the ring back on his finger and “much shinier” thanks to a woman who found it while snorkeling.
Roxy Walsh was snorkeling at Finn's Beach Club in Bali earlier this month when she says she spotted a gold ring on the ocean’s floor. She picked the ring up and put it on her thumb and continued snorkeling.
Once she got back on the beach, she saw the ring had the following inscription engraved on the back, “Darling Joe, Happy 70th Birthday 2009, Love Jenny.”
“[I] realized that it might have been something special,” Walsh told “Today,” an Australian television program.
Walsh took to Facebook to try to find the ring’s owners. She first posted photos of the ring on her business' Facebook page on April 7 and then created a page just for the ring, titled “Find Joe and Jenny.”
Days later, the granddaughter of the ring’s owner, Joe Langley, saw the Facebook page and connected Langley back to his ring.
“It was, in our mind lost forever, and that was pretty sad and upsetting because Jenny went to a heck of a lot of trouble to find this ring,” Langley told "Today" of himself and his wife. “She’d searched out for it and found it in an antique shop and got the story on it and gave it to me on my 70th birthday and then I lost it.”
Langley said he had been swimming at Finn’s Beach Club nine months prior to Walsh and had gotten caught in “a rip” and lost the ring.
“I went out in obviously the same place that Roxy went out for a swim and I got caught in the same rip that she got caught in and got washed under the rocks and in trying to claw out of the water over the rocks, the rocks obviously pulled the ring off my finger,” he said. “It’s been there for nine months waiting for Roxy to come for a swim.”
Adding another element to the story is that Walsh and Langley live close enough to each other in Australia that Walsh was able to drive to Langley's hometown of Noosa and hand-deliver the ring.
“I had messages from all over the world and in my head was going to deliver it in Italy or America or somewhere a bit more exotic but turns out he was just up the road,” Walsh said.
Langley says he is just happy his ring was not only found but found by Walsh.
“I’m lucky she found the ring and I’m more lucky because the person who found it was so honest and caring and wanted to get it back,” he said on “Today.” “It’s much shinier now. Roxy had it polished up for me.”
