WAUKESHA, Wis. — A woman calls the return of her missing class ring a "divine intervention."
Sherry Williams said getting her ring back was the Easter present she desperately needed after the recent death of her father.
Williams has not seen this ring since the early 1980s. The man who found it, Phil Case, was not even alive when she lost it. He found it 15 years ago when he was still a teen in Bay View.
"My friends and I were just skateboarding around the street," said Case. "I saw it in some leaves on the side of the road."
He took the ring home with him and got to work trying to find the owner.
"I couldn't find her in the phone book and I think it was the only way we had to do it," said Case.
So it went into a box and was forgotten until this week. This time, he turned to Facebook and realized the whole time he had read the name on the ring wrong.
"I thought it was Osinowski, the T kind of looked I and the R kind of looked like an N," he said.
But the internet came to the rescue.
"Facebook gave me Sherry and I think the post was shared 200 times," said Case.
So on Good Friday, he brought Sherry Ostrowski, now Williams, her class of '81 ring.
"Wow, I have not seen this for 30 years," said Williams.
She said the ring had been stolen three decades ago when a neighbor had broken into her family's house. She always assumed it was just gone.
She said being reunited with her ring could not have come at a better time.
"My dad passed away just a couple weeks ago. So I think it's kind of divine intervention during Easter all of a sudden my ring after 30 years is returned," said Williams.
Williams says after losing her dad the process of people helping her connect with her missing ring has brought old friends from high school back into her life at a time when she really needed it.
"I got contacted by my friends," said Williams. "My friend from Maryland called me. It was amazing. This kind of really cheered me up and is going to help make my Easter a lot better."
