A Woman Was Reunited With Her Lost Wedding Rings After a Stranger Used Social Media to Track Her Down

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 her stack. “It’s a past, present, and future ring, and it meant more than just that,” Jamie told KFVS-TV. But in January 2022, Jamie misplaced those significant pieces of jewelry. The couple was attending a WWE event for their son, so they decided to hit the St. Louis Premium Outlet Mall in Chesterfield, Missouri, beforehand. When Jamie got back to their hotel room that night, the rings were gone. “I looked down at my hand and 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 workers had located the missing jewels, but Jamie left her name and phone number just in case they came across the accessories. “My first thought was somebody probably found it and I’m never getting it back,” she admitted. Although the initial search wasn’t a success, Jamie decided to post about her missing gemstones in a Facebook group called “Lost and Found Wedding Rings.”

The following month, Mike Patton was shopping at the Nike outlet store in the Chesterfield shopping center when he spotted the diamond rings. According to his wife, Jayne Patton, Mike took the sparklers over to the counter and told them about the missing items, but they didn’t want to take responsibility. So, instead, Mike intended to take the rings home to his wife, so she could post about the incident on social media. However, once Mike got to work, he completely forgot about the ring. Out of habit, he emptied his pockets, placing all of the objects into his desk drawer, which is 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 brought them home and gave them to Jayne. After cleaning the sparklers, Jayne placed them in a box, took photos of the objects, and uploaded them to Facebook. Within 24 hours, more than 1,000 people shared the post, per 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 eventually sent to Jayne. Once Jayne saw the original message, she connected the dots and reached out to Jamie. But since Jamie's profile was on a private setting, Jayne never received a reply. 

Jayne was eager to reunite the original owner with her rings, so she 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 would be able to get in touch with with her. Meanwhile, Jamie was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer and said she was at her lowest point in her cancer journey at that time—until her husband told her the good news. “He showed me a picture and said, ‘I think someone found your ring,’ and I was just shaking,” Jamie said. “I couldn’t stop shaking. I was so excited.”

Jayne sent the rings to Jamie in the mail, and the package arrived the day after her final round of chemo. Since Jamie wasn’t home at the time, Josh opened the package and sent his wife a picture of the sparklers. “I look back, and I think, ‘Why did it happen like it did?’” Jamie reflected. “And I think that it came back to me at a time that I needed it the most.”