My 37-year-old gift to a stranger

To the editor:
    Recently I sent out a long awaited Christmas gift to a stranger in Illinois. Catherine Wilson has been waiting 37 years for this gift!
    I am from Maine and in 1993 when I was 17 years old, I found a woman’s class ring under the seat of my car while — ironically — looking for my own class ring. (Which I never found.) This class ring was inscribed with the initials CAP, and said Warriors. I assumed it was from a local school and over the years posted on a few websites and looked at alumni class lists at surrounding schools.
    It wasn’t until recently that I showed it to my daughter who told me it said Dakota Warriors. I hadn’t seen the word Dakota for all of these years. I quickly searched online and found only two schools whose school was named Dakota and the mascot was the Warriors. One was in Michigan and one in Illinois. The stone in the ring was green and the school color for the Illinois high school was green. Bingo!
    I searched Facebook for alumni from the class of 1974 as it said on the ring. I wrote to three people before getting an immediate reply from a woman named Catherine Pontnack Wilson who reported her maiden name to be Catherine Ann Pontnack — CAP from the inscription inside the ring! I found the owner within an hour of searching on Facebook!
    Catherine reported how she had lost her ring. She and her friends were playing outside at an acquaintance’s home in 1974 in Freeport, Ill. when she lost it in the grass. She looked and looked but could not find it. Somehow this ring was found on the grass, 14 years later dropped in a 1988 Ford Tempo under the seat, and finally ended up in my hands 19 years later and 1,500 miles away in Houlton, Maine. This ring had been traveling for 37 years and finally reached my hands. I wasn’t even born until 1975, this ring was already lost before I was born!
    Catherine will be reunited with her ring just in time for the holidays. I was so happy to help! Hopefully my class ring will be found one of these days and returned to me.
Heidi Dobbins Merlet
Burlington, N.C.