Missing ring returned to Fostoria couple

Imagine a scenario in which, over time, a young woman receives a class ring from her boyfriend, loses the ring and, nearly 60 years later, has it back in her hands. "It's like a Harlequin novel," said Fostoria resident Barb Reineck. But it's also a real-life story for Barb Reineck, her husband, Bill, and Findlay resident Tori Cisneros. The tradition has become less common, but back in 1965, it was a "thing" for a young man to give his class ring to a young woman to signify that they were "going steady." Barb Batesole, a sophomore at St. Joseph Central Catholic High School in Fremont, lost senior Bill Reineck's ring shortly after he gave it to her. Fifty-five years after Barb and Bill were married, Cisneros in February discovered an unfamiliar ring in a jewelry box that belonged to her recently deceased mother, Maggie Lopez. Within a day of posting a photo of the ring on Facebook, a Jostens employee traced it to Reineck and notified Cisneros. Cisneros subsequently contacted the Reinecks and, on Valentine's Day, no less, came to Fostoria to return the long-missing ring. "They were so happy," Cisneros said. "They were just ecstatic to get this ring, and I was so beyond happy to give it to them. It was awesome. The whole experience was great. And they're great people; they're wonderful people. It was just so nice to meet them. I even told my fiance, 'I could totally see us going out to dinner with them.' They're so nice." Bill Reineck acknowledged that he was skeptical when he received a Facebook message from Cisneros reading: "Hello, William. My name is Victoria. Long story short, my mother passed away last week and my sisters and I were going through her jewelry box. We found a class ring and wanted to know who it belonged to. I posted it on a lost-and-found site and a Jostens rep helped me find you. So, we believe that my mother found your ring at some point and I was unsure about how to go about finding you. I believe it belongs to you." Cisneros attached a photo of the ring. "I didn't even remember what the ring looked like," Bill Reineck said with a laugh. Reineck, who, with his wife, owns and operates JB Twisters Ice Cream & Things in Fostoria, certainly didn't expect to see the ring in person in a matter of hours. "It was late in the evening," he said of reading Cisneros' Facebook message. "So, I didn't call her that night. The next day – she got my number from (the Reinecks' son) Doug, who she'd found on Facebook – she called me. We were both down at the store. I still hadn't processed it much. Barb just happened to be in the store, and I said, 'You're better off talking to Barb.'" The mystery remains of how Maggie Lopez came to possess the lost ring aside from the fact that she and her husband, Tracy, were neighbors in Fremont of the Batesoles. The Lopezes would later move to Findlay. "I lost (the ring) a couple of weeks after he gave it to me, crossing the street on North Fifth, going over to my girlfriend's house to catch a ride to school," Barb Reineck said. "And when I got home from school and searched for it, I couldn't find it. I searched and searched and searched and never found it."She added: "I was so upset. Oh, my gosh. I don't remember him really getting upset at me, though." Somehow, the ring ended up in Maggie Lopez's jewelry box, in Findlay, where Tracy Lopez owns Northwest Installations and employs, among others, his daughter and her fiance. "My mother passed way in February and my sisters and I needed to find all of her jewelry and get it all together," Cisneros said. "That way, we could have it appraised and redeemed. This class ring was in there and none of us had ever seen it. So, I asked my dad, 'Whose ring is it?' I knew it wasn't his. He was, like, 'I don't know. I've never seen it.' He goes, 'Who knows? Your mom probably found it somewhere.' I said, 'I want to try to find out whose it is.'" Cisneros said it became her "mission" to find the ring's owner. "I just felt like, if it were my class ring, I would want it," she said. "My fiance lost his class ring a long, long time ago. When we found (the Reinecks') ring, I said to him, 'Wouldn't you want your ring?' And he said, 'I wish somebody would return my ring.'" After graduating from St. Joseph, Bill Reineck attended the University of Dayton and, straight out of school, took a job with Atlas Crankshaft, from which he retired after 30 years. He and Barb married in 1968. "It's been good," he said. "... Three boys and a lot of fun." And the mystery of the missing ring is something they'll keep in their memory bank, as will Cisneros, who gave the soiled ring a healthy cleaning and put it in a box to give to the Reinecks. "I'm expecting this old, beat-up, nasty, 60-years-in-the-dirt-somewhere ring," Barb Reineck said. "It's gold. They could have sold it or hocked it or whatever. It's amazing. She said, 'I cleaned it up a little bit for you.' And I'm thinking, 'A little bit? It looks like a brand-new ring' – which it, basically, kind of was when it was lost."Cisneros did not return home empty-handed from her trip to Fostoria. "We probably didn't give her enough, but we rewarded her with gift certificates, quite a few, from (JB Twisters) and, since they live in Findlay, (their son) Mark's store, Mr. Twister," Bill Reineck said. It just so happens that Mr. Twister is Cisneros' favorite ice cream stop in Findlay. "I didn't expect anything," she said. "The reward was seeing them with their ring." And she believes she did well by her mother. "My mom was that way," she said. "My mom was the type of person who, if she found something, she would hold onto it because, in her mind, she knew she was going to find out whose it was someday. ... She was just a really good person. "I wish she were here because I could have done it with her. She would have loved it."