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High school rings lost for a combined 76 years are reunited with owners thanks to Cutchogue metal-detecting enthusiast

Donna Penney of Mattituck with Rich Miliauskas. Photo: Katharine Schroeder

Last week SoutholdLOCAL reported the story of a high school ring turning up after being buried in the sand beneath Peconic Bay for 36 years.

Metal-detecting enthusiast Rich Miliauskas of Cutchogue found the ring under three feet of water in 10 inches of sand and his daughter Jenn helped him track down its owner, Debbie Wells Cassidy of Mattituck.

Seeing Cassidy’s joy at being reunited with her ring led Miliauskas — with the encouragement of his daughter — to go through some of the boxes of his metal detecting finds and try to track down more owners of lost class rings.

Jenn soon found one owner who lived on the North Fork, and that led to a meeting Wednesday evening with Donna Penney of Mattituck, who had lost her William Floyd High School ring a year ago at Goldsmith’s Inlet in Peconic.

“The ring didn’t fit properly and I was wearing it on my pinkie,” remembers Penney. “It slipped off while I was swimming.”

Penney was delighted to have the ring back and said that it was especially meaningful because her late husband had also been a metal detecting enthusiast who had once found someone’s college ring, tracked down the owner, and returned it.

She thanked Miliauskas by giving him her husband’s metal detectors which, she said, she had been unable to part with since his death five years ago.

Donna Penney, left, with Rich and Jenn Miliauskas. Photo: Katharine Schroeder

But the story doesn’t end there. In fact, it gets even better.

After the meeting with Penney, Jenn and Rich brought out a container holding five more rings of varying ages and styles. All had either names or initials inside and they were hoping that if the rings were included in this story, the owners might be found as well.

Miliauskas had tried unsuccessfully to find some of the owners and had even enlisted Jenn’s help in posting on lost and found sites. Jenn was able to find some information, but had no luck tracking down any owners. She contacted several alumni associations and made some phone calls but never heard back from anyone.

SoutholdLOCAL was able to track down the owners of two of the five rings Miliauskas brought with him yesterday evening.

One ring belongs to Genevieve (Caravello) Allen, a 1984 graduate of Greenport High School who now lives in Tennessee, and the other to Sue Mulderrig, a woman from Brooklyn who spent time on the North Fork when she was younger and now lives in New Jersey.

It was 1975 and Mulderrig was splashing in the water at a bay beach in Cutchogue when her 1971 Stella Maris High School ring flew off her finger.

For 42 years the ring sat beneath the waves and sand until Miliauskas recently dug it out.

When told that her ring had been found, Mulderrig was stunned.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.

Mulderrig had never forgotten the ring, she said. “I was having a conversation just last month about school rings and I remember thinking about how much I missed that ring because it meant so much to me. The stone was the most beautiful color you’ve ever seen.”

“I’m in shock,” she said. “The kindness of people in this world is amazing. It would have been so much easier to sell the ring but he didn’t.”

Sue Mulderrig in high school and today. Photos courtesy Sue Mulderrig

Genevieve Allen’s story is nearly as remarkable. Her ring has been at the bottom of Gull Pond in Greenport since she lost it while swimming in 1984. 

“I never thought I’d see it again,” she said in a phone interview. “It just fell off my finger one day. I’d had it only six months and then it was gone.”

Miliauskas found it a few years ago; it was the first class ring he’d ever discovered. He tried to locate its owner at the time, but couldn’t so he ended up storing the ring with his other detecting finds.

Genevieve (Caravello) Allen in high school and today. Photos courtesy Genevieve (Caravello) Allen

And so, in one week Rich and Jenn Miliauskas have made three people very happy. It is their hope that they can find the owners of the remaining three rings as well. Although a lot of time and effort goes into finding lost items, Rich and Jenn are happy to return what they can to the owners. Rich recently contacted the owner of some dog tags he found and those will be sent off soon.

“I like to think we’re giving back in some small way,” said Jenn.

Here are the remaining three rings:

1935 EDE HS
1935 RHS
1961 Greenbrier Military School

If you think you know the owner of any of the three rings pictured here, please email the author.

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Katharine is a writer and photographer who has lived on the North Fork for nearly 40 years, except for three-plus years in Hong Kong a decade ago, working for the actor Jackie Chan. She lives in Cutchogue. Email Katharine