Corbin resident hopes to solve mystery of missing class ring

Corbin resident Mario Cima, above, holds the Whitley County Middle School class ring he found 12 years ago on a downtown Corbin sidewalk. He is trying to reunite the ring with its owner.

A Corbin man is hoping to solve a 12-year-old mystery, and in the process reunite a long lost middle school class ring with its owner.

Mario Cima said he was doing his daily two-mile walk in the early Fall of 1999 when he found the ring lying near the sidewalk near Corbin Middle School.

"As I got to some hedges, there was a little mud on the side of the sidewalk and I saw a shiny glare down below me about three feet out in front of me," Cima said, recounting the story of how he discovered the ring to The News Journal.

"I moved the dirt and mud away from it … it was very muddy, but not really obscured in any way. I don’t know how long it had been there."

The ring is a Whitley County Middle School class ring, inset with a blue stone. It is silver in color and has a date on the side indicating the year the wearer graduated from middle school. On the inside of the band, three initials are inscribed.
The ring appears, by its size, to have belonged to a male.

Cima said he’s made various attempts to find the owner of the ring. It lay on his bedside table for three years before he finally contacted officials with the Whitley County school system to help locate the owner.

"They said they would check on it, but I never heard back from them," Cima said. "I was hoping to find the answer to this mystery, but I didn’t."

Cima said that over the past 12 years he’s thought a lot about the circumstances under which he found the ring. He said it was early in basketball season and that there was a lot of activity at the school at the time. A ballgame was going on at the Corbin Middle School gymnasium.

"There were cars all around. There were a lot of functions going on at that time," Cima said. "I just envision that some kid had this in his backpack and was rushing to get somewhere and it fell out and he didn’t even know it."

The date on the ring, though, is for quite a few years earlier than 1999, indicating it may have belonged to an adult or was given to a child by an adult for some reason.

"That just makes the mystery more inviting. Was it an adult that lost that ring, or had it just lain there for so many years before the rain finally revealed it? It’s hard to know."

Cima said he’s kept the ring safe all these years in hopes of finding the owner. Anyone that thinks the ring may belong to them is encouraged to call The News Journal at 528-9767. If you can provide the initials inscribed on the inside of the band, the ring will be returned to you.

"I’m hoping that through your excellent newspaper I can find the owner of this ring and give it back to them," Cima said. "That would be a great ending to this story."