Sunday went from happy, to panicked, to melancholy in a matter of minutes.
Sarah White’s husband, Edward, had unexpectedly returned from a deployment on the Navy aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman a week before, and the couple and their three children were blissfully spending the day together at Jamestown Beach Event Park.
When White, 36, left the water to return to the beach, things took a turn for the worse: Her wedding ring, which she had worn every day for seven years, was missing from her hand.
“I thought it was lost forever,” White said. “I was expecting to never see it again.”
But with some luck and a few good Samaritans, White now has her ring back — just in time for her and her husband’s 10-year anniversary on Sept. 2.
A stroke of luck
Laina, 11, and Ava, 9, were digging around in the shallow water of the James River when they found a bright, sparkling wedding ring around noon Thursday.
Their mother, Jamie Cutshaw, 36, was sitting on the beach reading a book as the girls played in the water near the shore.
Laina, who was on her stomach digging in the water and sand, lifted a ring — White’s ring — from the water and yelled to her mother that she found a “mermaid ring.”
A woman standing near the Cutshaw family at the beach told them a woman had lost her wedding ring Sunday and was very upset about the loss.
Laina brought the ring to her mother and asked what they should do with it. For Cutshaw, the answer was simple.
“We decided to take it to the park ranger,” Cutshaw said. “It’s important to teach honesty to our children. We’ve found wallets before and we’ve taken them to the police station. It’s something my girls know.”
A perfect match
On Tuesday, White posted on a Williamsburg-area Facebook group asking beachgoers to be on the lookout for the ring.
“To be honest I don’t want a different style or an upgrade, all I really want is for it to miraculously be back on my hand,” she wrote.
There was a strong community response. Some jewelers reached out to offer to recreate the ring, which is no longer made. Other community members sent positive thoughts White’s way. One woman reached out and offered for her husband to use his metal detector on the beach.
That’s when Alex Holloway, park operations manager for James City County, got involved.
Holloway gave permission for the couple to use a metal detector on the beach Wednesday and Thursday.
“We thought they were basically looking for a needle in a haystack,” Holloway said.
The metal-detector group planned to return to the beach at 4:30 p.m. Thursday to conduct another search, but by 4 p.m., White had her ring back.
After Cutshaw handed the wedding ring over to the parks department, Holloway asked White to send him a picture of her ring so he could match it to the ring found by Laina.
It was a perfect match, and a “wonderful story,” Holloway said.
“Good things happen when you’re a good person with a good heart,” White said. “Maybe somewhere along the line I was kind to somebody else and it’s coming back to me.”
An unexpected friendship
White was reunited with the ring at the same park where she lost it, about four hours after the girls found the keepsake.
“[The park] called me and said ‘Hey, I think your ring’s been found in the water,’” White said. “I sent him a picture of it, and now it’s back on my hand.”
White called Cutshaw Thursday afternoon to thank her for returning her ring.
“I would be devastated if I lost my wedding ring,” Cutshaw said. “It feels like fate. We were meant to find it.”
The unfortunate event may have also blossomed into something else: a friendship between families.
Both Cutshaw’s son and Laina will attend the same school this coming fall. The families have already made plans to reconnect for another beach day.
But this time, White plans to leave her wedding ring at home.
Sarah Fearing can be reached at sarah.f@localvoicemedia.com.
