More than 20 years ago, Josh Hawkins proposed to his college sweetheart, Jamie Hawkins, with a three-stone diamond engagement ring. Then, on their wedding day, he gave his new wife a matching diamond wedding band to complete the stack. “It’s a past, present and future ring, and it meant more than that,” Jamie told KFVS-TV. But in January 2022, Jamie misplaced these significant pieces of jewellery. The couple were attending a WWE event for their son, so they decided to go to the St. Louis Premium Outlet Mall in Chesterfield, Missouri, first. When Jamie returned to their hotel room that night, the rings were gone. “I looked down at my hand and I didn’t see my ring,” she recalled.
After her son’s event, the duo went back to the mall to retrace their steps. None of the store staff had found the missing jewellery, but Jamie left her name and phone number in case they came across the accessories. “My first thought was that someone had probably found it and I’d never get it back,” she admitted. Although the initial search wasn’t successful, Jamie decided to post about her missing jewels in a Facebook group called “Lost and Found Wedding Rings.
The following month, Mike Patton was shopping at the Nike outlet store in Chesterfield when he spotted the diamond rings. According to his wife, Jayne Patton, Mike took the sparklers to the counter and told them about the missing items, but they didn’t want to take responsibility. Instead, Mike planned to take the rings home to his wife so she could post about the incident on social media. But when Mike got to work, he completely forgot about the ring. Out of habit, he emptied his pockets and put everything in his desk drawer, where the wedding rings sat for a year and a half.
One day, Mike was cleaning out his desk drawer and remembered the rings; he took them home and gave them to Jayne. After cleaning the sparklers, Jayne put them in a box, took photos of the items and uploaded them to Facebook. Within 24 hours, more than 1,000 people had shared the post, according to KFVS-TV. A Facebook friend of a friend of a friend saw Jayne’s post and forwarded Jamie’s lost ring post to others until it was finally sent to Jayne. When Jayne saw the original message, she connected the dots and contacted Jamie. However, as Jamie’s profile was set to private, Jayne never received a reply.
Desperate to reunite the original owner with her rings, Jayne contacted her sister-in-law, who lives in the same town as Jamie. Her sister-in-law happened to work in Jamie’s building – talk about fate! – so she asked if a mutual friend could get in touch with her. Meanwhile, Jamie was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer and says she was at the lowest point of her cancer journey – until her husband gave her the good news. “He showed me a picture and said, ‘I think someone has found your ring,’ and I was just shaking,” Jamie said. “I couldn’t stop shaking. I was so excited.”
Jayne posted the rings to Jamie and the package arrived the day after her last round of chemotherapy. As Jamie wasn’t home at the time, Josh opened the package and sent his wife a picture of the sparklers. “I look back and think, ‘Why did this happen?'” Jamie reflected. “And I think it came back to me at a time when I needed it the most.”
