The New York Post notes it may be "the only good thing to come out of Superstorm Sandy." For 68-year-old Jim Keelen, the return of his class ring, lost more than a half-century ago, is a "miracle." News 12 reports that the orange-stoned ring vanished in 1972 during a beach day on the Jersey Shore, not long after Keelen had graduated from Watchung Hills Regional High School in Warren. "We did what young kids do and I lost my ring that weekend" in Point Pleasant Beach, Keelen tells Patch. "I figured if it was lost on the beach it was toast."
Fast forward to 2023, when earlier this month Anthony Dimaria-Sidorski headed out one evening to take photos of the sunset along a creek behind his home in Point Pleasant Borough. Something sparkling in the last rays of light caught the 21-year-old's eye—Keelen's ring, sitting on the side of the creek near its opening. Dimaria-Sidorski noticed the graduation year on the ring and posted photos of it on Facebook, where they soon reached a WHRHS alumni group. Someone in that group tagged Keelen, who confirmed the ring was his.
"Fifty-one years later, this is happening," Keelen tells News 12. "I still can't believe it." As for the Superstorm Sandy link, Keelen thinks the ring turned up where it did thanks to that extreme weather event. "Maybe it washed off the beach and was deposited inland and by chance—a miracle—he found it," Keelen tells Patch of the ring, which he's now having fixed and resized. Dimaria-Sidorski, who just graduated himself last month from New Jersey's Georgian Court University, says he never contemplated keeping the ring or selling it. "Treat others the way you want to be treated," he tells the Post. (More ring stories.)
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