Woman reunited with lost bracelet after 17 months

Oct. 29 (UPI) -- A New York state widow who lost the gold bracelet that contained her late husband's class ring at a Minnesota airport was reunited with the beloved item more than a year later.

Marcia Snyder said the gold bracelet carried items of sentimental value, including charms bearing her children's names and a class ring belonging to her late husband, Bob, when she lost it somewhere between security and her gate at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport in July 2018.

Snyder and her son, Gary, searched for the bracelet but were unable to find it before boarding their plane.

"We looked and looked and looked," Snyder told The Buffalo News.

The bracelet was picked up off the ground by California woman Penny Sands, who found it while walking through the airport before catching her own flight home.

Sands said she and her husband attempted to find clues to the bracelet's owner, but the charms only contained the children's first names and the ring bore only the year 1955 and the town name of Williamsville.

She identified some sorority charms on the bracelet and attempted to find the owner that way, but was unable to find any leads.

Sands said 17 months after she found the ring, her husband decided to take a look at it with his new toy, a magnifying class attached to a high-powered light. They identified the initials R.W.S. inside the band of the ring.

The couple found a website with a Williamsville 1955 yearbook and found a senior named Robert Willis Snyder. Online searches brought up Snyder's obituary, which had a phone number for Amigone Funeral Home.

The funeral home passed a message along to Marcia Snyder, who quickly called Sands.

The bracelet was safely shipped home to New York state.

"There's just a quality to this that's very healing," Snyder told The Buffalo News. "After she found it, she could have forgotten it or she could have sold it or she could have just put it away."