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One Mystery Solved, Another Remains For Missing Escalon High School Class Rings

ESCALON (CBS13) — A high-school football coach's class ring was stolen 40 years ago, and he had given up hope until the phone rang on Sunday.

We found Roger Beeman in a familiar place, the practice field at Escalon High School. It's where he went to school and where he now teaches and coaches freshman football. He told us a story his four children all know well, the story of his lost class ring.

"Let's say it disappeared from a locker room in Gustine," he said. "Got it end of my junior year; lost it beginning of my senior year."

And that was that for 40 years since 1975 until a post on Facebook.

"Which is part of the irony. I've never even been on Facebook—I have no idea," he said.

A woman posted a picture on the Escalon Historical Museum's page of an Escalon class of '76 ring with the initials RKB. It wasn't long before people figured out whose ring it was.

"Forty years later, I'm still at Escalon, so I'm not making a whole lot of progress," he said. "Maybe I'm that easy to find."

The woman who called Beeman said her husband found the long lost ring in a field in southern Merced County.

Beeman says it means a lot that someone would go through the trouble of tracking down the ring's rightful owner.

"We talk a lot to the kids about the traditions and memories they get in high school—they really are a treasure—and to have anything that reminds you of that is really special," he said.

One of Beeman's friends found a woman's class ring that appears to have the initials CJC inscribed. He's tried to find the owner, but he's never been able to find out who it belongs to.

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