Man discovers ring lost in 1995 had been found years ago

Sept. 30 (UPI) -- A Canadian man who lost his gold ring -- a gift from his late mother -- during a day at the lake in 1995 learned it had been found by a man with a metal detector more than two decades ago.

Chris Spronk said his mother had two gold rings made, one for him and one for his brother, in 1992, shortly before she died from cancer. He lost his ring in 1995 while throwing a football at Lake Sikome in Fish Creek Provincial Park in Calgary, Alberta.

"I go to throw and I look at my hand, and it's like, my ring wasn't there," Spronk told Global News. "I came back with my brother. We took all the screens out of our apartment and tried to screen the sand, we rented a metal detector, and we had no luck whatsoever. And then, I just finally chalked it up that it was gone."

Spronk said he thought the ring was gone for good until this month, when he spoke to metal detector hobbyist Kevin Niefer on social media.

"And I am reading, and I go, 'Oh, I have that ring,'" Niefer said. "Typically, a lot of guys don't keep those rings that long. They will melt them down or sell them. And I have just kind of kept them, just in case, right."

Niefer has been metal detecting for about 33 years, and typically reunites several rings and other precious items with their owners each year.

"For Kevin to have the integrity to hang onto something like that, because it may be important to somebody and then maybe someday it'll be found, it blows me away," Spronk said. "On the inside [of the ring] it says, 'Chris, love Mom.' I think a mother's love for her sons is something special."

Spronk was reunited with the ring and posted a photo of the precious item on Facebook.

"Thank you for the storage for 25 years," Spronk told Niefer. "Because now I can enjoy it again and I really know what it means to me -- Wow!"