MAZOMANIE (WKOW) -- Decades after a Dane County woman lost her high school class ring in another country, she has it back thanks to the persistence of a German woman dedicated to returning it home to Wisconsin.
In 1986, Wisconsin Heights High School sophomore Amy Ayers went on a class trip to Germany. But after just a few days overseas, she discovered it was missing.
"I was lifting my glass up to drink and realized that my ring was gone. And then it was complete panic," Amy, said, looking back on the incident.
After searching for it, Amy, whose married name is now Amy Wildman, determined it was likely lost for good and went back home.
"I didn't ever, ever expect to see it again," Wildman told 27 News.
Until last year, when Wisconsin Heights School District got a message from Munich. Daniela Schmidt-Müeller said she'd found it in 1988 and finally was able to read the writing.
"So the first thing we did, is we went to the yearbook of that year to find out who would have graduated in 1988. And that's kind of where we started and we knew that the name was Amy, so those were the two clues we had of the ring, the year and the name," said Bev Whalen, who works for the district.
Whalen found four Amys in that graduating class, three of them who were in German club. Amy Ayers was skipped over initially, because she spelled her name in the yearbook "Amiee".
One of the other Amys put Whalen on the right track.
"[She said] but you know, the Amy that spells her name differently changed the way she spells her name, so check with her. So sure enough I found, Amy on Facebook," Whalen said.
Schmidt-Müeller finally connected with Amy Wildman in late 2020 and shipped the ring.
"When she called and she said, and asked me if I was the girl who had gone to Germany and lost a class ring, I was absolutely shocked," Wildman said. "The hair stood up on the back of my neck and it was like, I mean, how could this ring that's been gone this long, find its way back? It was miraculous."
27 News arranged for a Zoom meeting between the two in April, where Schmidt-Müeller was able to share her motivation through a translator.
She said she found the ring at a train station in Munich and held on to it all these years because she knew someone would be missing it. She felt connected to the owner, after she lost her own special ring as a child.
Schmidt-Müeller said she couldn't read the name or the year on the ring at first, but more recently her children were able to decipher it and helped her find the school online.
Now, she's grateful it's returned after such a long journey.
"I called up my mom right away and told her that she was not going to believe this in a million years," Amy Wildman said. "And then my family, when we got the ring, we went out to dinner and celebrated."
Even after they connected online, the ring almost didn't make it home. It got caught up in pandemic post office delays, taking four months to arrive. Amy says she'll never lose it again.
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May 13, 2021 at 06:58AM
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'It was miraculous': Woman's ring returns home 35 years later - WKOW
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