SAN ANTONIO – Two men met up Monday at Woodlawn Lake, one carrying something very special: a high school class ring the other man lost over 25 years ago.
“Here you go, here’s your class ring!” Arthur Noel said with a smile.
“Well, that looks like it! I wonder if it still fits,” Gary Lochte said, laughing.
It’s a scenario that may seem familiar to KSAT viewers. It’s the second reunion of its kind in under three weeks.
In December, San Antonio collector Richard Escobedo tracked down Lamarcus Johnson to return his class ring.
KSAT got to be there for that joyful reunion.
Escobedo lost his own beloved class ring that he designed before he graduated in 1982 from John F. Kennedy High School in San Antonio.
While scouring pawn shops for his ring, he saw so many others and started buying them with a goal of reuniting them with their owners.
Escobedo created a Facebook page called Class Rings Bought to Reunite to Rightful Owners. He posts photos of lost rings and connects with people looking for theirs.
He has returned more than 200 rings in six years. He’s even accrued a team from across the country that now helps run the group, including Pamela Saunders from Indiana, Heather A de Leur from Louisiana, and Celina Encino from Texas.
After KSAT’s story in December about Escobedo and Johnson’s meeting, emails and calls poured in with people either looking for their rings or describing rings they’d found.
One of those people was Pamela Noel. She and her husband Arthur now live in Devine, Texas and have been in possession of someone’s class ring for 26 years. They were hoping to get it back to them.
Their son found the ring in Medina Lake in 2000, but they couldn’t find the owner, so they put it in a tin can.
“And then of course we relocated like three times from Texas to the northeast and back, and it stayed in that tin can with us,” Arthur Noel said. “And we were watching KSAT and saw Richard, and my wife’s like, ‘I’m going to contact him.’ And I said, ‘Good luck with that!’ She comes back and she goes, ‘You’re not going to believe this, they found the owner.’ I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’”
Gary Lochte stood laughing with Noel, recounting his side of the story.
“My son called me and said, ‘Dad, some guy’s calling you. He found your ring.’ I’m going, ‘What ring? Richard texted me the next day. He sent the photos, and I said, ‘That’s absolutely it,’” Lochte said.
Lochte held the rung up as he described it.
“This was Canyon High School which is at New Braunfels, Texas, 1971,” Lochte said. “So we’re about to have our 55th high school reunion. I remember the school emblem, red and white. I remembered the cougar, and I also vaguely remembered this little dent on the inside.”
He said his class will be thrilled to see the ring.
“We always looked out for each other,” Lochte said. “It was a small, small class and great friendships, and we’ve just maintained them over the years. It’s really remarkable, and I’m very blessed to have it now.”
Lochte said to Noel, “It’s pretty amazing, and to think that it made so many trips back and forth, Texas, back and forth to the northeast, and then still ended up back in Texas at home, that’s remarkable!”
“Almost 7,000 miles of travel, yeah, and never was lost,” Noel said.
They agree it may be the start of a new friendship, as they continued to catch up long after the KSAT interviews were done.
It’s a memory 26 years in the making that, unlike a ring, can never be lost.
As for Escobedo, he’s still trying to find his ring. KSAT, along with the community, wants to help him.
He hopes everyone will keep an eye out for his ring, a John F. Kennedy High School ring with an oval green stone and rocket under the stone.
The ring has a rocket on one side and band instruments on the other side. His signature is inside the ring.
Anyone who thinks they’ve found Escobedo’s ring can reach out to him on Facebook, or email Courtney Friedman at cfriedman@ksat.com.
Escobedo also wants people to know the rings that owners don’t want, or that seem to be samples, are sold back to Alamo Antique Mall. Anyone searching for their ring can look there as well.
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