A long lost class ring washed-out of an Anderson County sewer line after going missing for nearly four decades. Now, it's reunited with the Norris High School graduate who lost it down the kitchen drain.
"The ring is like a brand new one. Brand new one, like nothing was wrong with it."
Darlene Cooper is reunited with the class ring that slipped off her finger 37 years ago.
Darlene was a teenage mother in 1968, living here in downtown Clinton at the corner of Washington Avenue and Strother Place. She lost her graduation ring down the drain of this kitchen sink, while she was bathing her baby.
"Mom didn't have much money. We were real tight, and she worked real hard for me to get this ring. And I hated that I lost it."
Members of this Clinton Utility Board Water and Sewer Crew discovered the female school ring while making repairs.
"We was just cleaning the line, we was having problem with the line with rocks and stuff out, then the ring rolled out and we picked it up," Paul Huckaby from the CUB Water & Sewer Crew says.
That discovery surprised the crew, who had no idea the ring's owner once lived around the corner from their work site.
Crew members located a 1968 yearbook from the now defunct Norris High School.
They searched for a female with the initials that matched those inside the ring.
"We found out it was Darlene King at that time," Bruce Crowley from the CUB Water & Sewer Crew explains . "I reckoned that she told them then that her name is now cooper. And that's how we found her; I looked in the phone book at that point."
That phone call led Darlene back to her old neighborhood to retrieve her keepsake.
"So we met each other, and I kept on hugging him, and hugging him, and hugging him. And I said I hope his wife's not going to get mad," Darlene says.
"We just done it out of our heart, you know, so," Huckaby says.
Darlene says she now intends to keep a tight hold on the ring, so that her family's future generations can cherish her long lost treasure.
"Oh yeah, it won't go off my hand.?
That discovery led to another ring being found, just minutes after the first. The Clinton Water and Sewer Crew making repairs found another female class ring in the same sewer pipe. Now they want help finding the owner of this 1971 Clinton High School ring, the initials inside are J-M-H.
Contact the CUB Crew at 740-8443, if you have information about the ring's owner.
Apparently, that anderson county sewer line is turning into a real gold mine.