June 30 (UPI) -- A Virginia man who lost his ring at a Christmas tree farm was reunited with the precious item 15 years later.
Wayne Corprew of Roanoke said he selected and cut down a Christmas tree at Joe's Trees in Newport in 2010 and discovered when he returned to his vehicle that his ring was missing from his finger.
"I went back up to where I dragged the tree to and searched there, but it wasn't there. I went back to the truck and couldn't find it there, so it was officially missing. The next day I came back and brought a metal detector. There was snow on the ground, and I spent all day the next day looking for it, and nothing," Corprew told WDBJ-TV.
Corprew returned in the summer to look again, but still came up empty.
The farm changed hands in 2018 when Darren Gilreath and his wife, Samantha, purchased it from his aunt, Sue Bostic.
The couple said they were tilling soil to plant corn around their pumpkin patch when Samantha noticed a shiny object in the soil Darren was tilling.
"As I'm planting corn, I'm walking through the rows, and I see this wedding band lying on the top of the ground. I said, 'That looks like a wedding band,' so I reached down and picked it up, and sure enough, it was this nice little gold band that was just lying in the dirt," Samantha Gilreath said.
The farm owners went through a bulletin board of notes left by Bostic when she handed over the farm and found a piece of paper with Corprew's contact information.
"She kept notes of anything that was lost, and we always put them on the bulletin board for a couple of years. As the years went on, we'd gather them and put them in a stack, just hoping one day that we'd find a needle in a haystack," Darren Gilreath said.
Corprew said he was grateful to be reunited with his ring.
"I'm just thankful for them that they kept that note for 15 years and that they thought to call me," Corprew said. "It goes to show that there are good people out there, and this is a great place."
A Nebraska man's Omaha Northwest High School Class of 1978 ring recently turned up in a Missouri garden after being lost for 44 years -- and soil was also involved in that incident.
Cary Crocker said he had never been to Rock Port, Mo., where his ring was found in Neal Lansdown's garden, but his family did run a flower shop around the time he lost the ring in 1981, so it may have ended up traveling along with some soil.
"We sold potted plants and all that for many years and I'd be down there from time to time to work, so I don't know, that could be a possibility," Crocker said.
