So what do you do when a jewelry store closes and the owner has your deceased mother’s ring?

If you can’t find him you call on Kurtis Ming, like a viewer from Shingle Springs did recently.

“This was the jewelry store. I never expected it to be out of business” says Colleen Schendel, and that was a big problem for her.

The ring belonged to her mother, who’d long passed away, and was on consignment in what had been Robard’s Fine Jewelry in Auburn.

When she looked inside and saw that it was empty her immediate reaction was: “That I got screwed.”

Colleen signed the agreement with store owner Herb Miller on December first; he’d sell the ring for her.

“It’s an emerald green with diamonds on the side. It was something that my dad gave to my mom” she says.

Colleen had been a customer of Robard’s Fine Jewelry for five years so she trusted Miller.

“He was a very nice person, very helpful.”

But she didn’t know Miller filed for chapter seven bankruptcy three months earlier.

When the ring didn’t sell by April she went to get it back, but Miller convinced her to leave it there a little longer; his bankruptcy liquidation had been discharged the previous month.

“And he should have known at that point that he was going out of business and he didn’t really allow me the opportunity to take my ring back.”

So, Colleen set out to find Herb Miller; she says she tried everything.

“Everything I can possibly think of and I can’t find him anywhere.”

Her best lead was what appeared to be a home address up the freeway in Applegate.

She left her name and number with a woman there who promised to give him the message immediately.

But she never got a call.

“I don’t know why he doesn’t want to see me. You don’t even have to say a word. Just hand me the ring and I’ll be gone.”

So we got on the case for her.

We contacted Miller’s bankruptcy lawyers who got us in touch with him.

We found out Miller also owned Folsom ice cream shop “Tasty Time.”

It too has since gone out of business.

We called Miller and he was not happy to hear from us, cursing our involvement and Colleen.

But he told us to have her send a letter to the store, or to a P.O. Box, and he’d send her the ring.

Well, that just renewed her determination.

Colleen took matters into her own hands and eventually got Miller to meet her at the Robard’s location.

She says he no longer had the ring, but he wrote her a check for the value of the ring — $440 — and it cleared.

Despite the months of hassle, what may sting most was that she says he betrayed their five year business relationship.

“I trusted him completely.”

It seems Herb Miller has more than bankruptcy problems.

Court records show that Miller is slated to go to trial in Placer County next month.

He’s charged with one count of “2nd hand dealing without a license” — a misdemeanor.