Less than 24 hours after Rye resident Pam Kerlan realized she had lost her engagement ring, it was back on her finger — thanks to the Rye Moms Facebook group.
Kerlan was at home preparing dinner over Labor Day weekend when she took off her rings and stored them in her pocket to marinate chicken. That moment had slipped her mind when she then took a long walk to the beach with her husband.
Several hours after they had returned home, Kerlan realized her pockets were empty and her engagement ring was missing.
Immediately, Kerlan’s husband, Michael, and daughter Charlotte retraced her steps to the beach. Dawn Merkel, Kerlan’s best friend, brought her daughters and they joined the search.
When they still couldn’t find the ring, Merkel posted on the Rye Moms Facebook page asking the community to keep their eyes peeled.
“Throughout our evening search party, I kept going back to the post to see if anyone wrote anything, and there were very few likes,” said Merkel. Kerlan went to sleep that night without her engagement ring.
The next day, Merkel received a phone call from a woman asking if she had lost an engagement ring.
“I immediately started screaming…I couldn’t believe it!” Merkel said. She added Kerlan to a three-way call with Amanda Chesley, who had a similar ring and had spotted Kerlan’s on the ground while walking her dog on Holly Lane in Loudon Woods. Chesley called Merkel when she saw the Facebook post.
When Chesley returned the ring, Kerlan gave her a big embrace.
“I am so glad I could get [the ring] back to Pam!” said Chesley. “I had known her from when our kids were at Midland School, but hadn’t seen her in a few years and was thrilled to re-unite her with her lost ring.”
Kerlan and her husband have been married for 23 years and the ring “meant so much to me.” She said, “It’s the best feeling ever, just knowing that the Rye community is so supportive and out there to help one another.”
“Thank you Rye Moms! You did it again!” Merkel posted in her Rye Moms Facebook post after the ring was back. “Miracles happen and today a miracle actually happened!”
Kerlan is deeply grateful for her friends’ and neighbors’ eagerness to help her in a stressful situation. “It never ceases to amaze me” how the Rye Moms group comes to the rescue, she said.
“This community is filled with wonderful, honest, helpful and caring women,” said Merkel.
Kerlan is glad that she and her husband chose to live in Rye 18 years ago.
“It just means the world to me that we all look after one another,” she said.
