Lore of the Ring: What Was Lost is Now Found

Hanford Site Social Media Reconnects Worker with Class Ring Missing for 30 Years

RICHLAND, Wash. – A ring believed lost is discovered decades later in an unlikely place. Knowing this ring may be precious to someone, a group of people start a quest to find its owner.

No, this is not a prequel to a famous ring-themed tale. It is a story of how one employee with EM Richland Operations Office (RL) contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPCCo) was reunited with his long-lost high school class ring thanks to the @hanfordsite Facebook page.

Doug Staudt, a CPCCo radiological control technician, lost his ring in the mid-1990s around the time he began his career at the Hanford Site.

“Once I realized it was gone, I looked for it for some time, but the search ended,” said Staudt. “It’s funny; not long ago I thought, ‘I wonder whatever happened to my class ring,’ thinking I would never see it again.”

Fast forward to last fall, when a local man and his son discovered a ring while taking apart an old car in a local wrecking yard. But it wasn’t just any old car; it was the Mazda that Staudt had sold 30 years earlier, soon after starting work at Hanford.

Intrigued by his find, the son brought the ring home to his grandmother, Diane Francis. Thinking it would be fun to try to find the ring’s owner, Francis set to work identifying clues. Magnifying glass in hand, she examined the ring and determined the owner had the initials “D.S.” and graduated from Kellogg High School in 1988.

However, the biggest clue was the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) symbol on the ring.

“There are several Kellogg High Schools in the U.S., but only the one in Idaho had JROTC programs,” said Francis. Kellogg, Idaho, is about 220 miles from Richland.

Francis messaged the high school’s Facebook page and asked for help finding the ring’s owner. Page administrator Gwen Johnson, a Kellogg graduate and school district employee, picked up the search from there. She contacted another 1988 graduate who helped narrow it down to Staudt. Through social media, Johnson discovered that Staudt worked on the Hanford Site, and she messaged the Hanford Facebook page to try to reconnect him with the ring.

Hanford Site Facebook page administrator Patrick Conrad, with contractor Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, saw the message and forwarded it to Dieter Bohrmann, in CPCCo’s communications department, to contact Staudt.

“Not surprisingly, most of the messages we get on social media are related to our cleanup mission,” said Conrad. “This was certainly an unexpected inquiry, but we were happy to help connect Staudt with Johnson at the high school.”

“A couple of days after I reached out on Hanford’s social media page, Doug called the district office and asked for me,” Johnson said. “I got permission from Diane to pass on her contact info to him and vice versa.”

Staudt reached out to Francis soon after and the two met at a local coffee shop, where Francis returned the ring to Staudt.

“Thirty years ago, before social media, this probably never would have happened,” said Staudt, of the ring’s return. “I am definitely going to put the ring in safekeeping; I don’t want to lose it for another 30 years!”