If you see Jim Nestell, '68, compliment him on the class ring adorning his finger. It took 31 years to get there.
In 1970, Nestell, then a graduate student at Dartmouth, left the ring in a service station restroom after washing up. He didn't realize until a few days later that the keepsake was missing.
Seven years later, a cable television technician named Rick Barrow spied a ring with a red stone and a large "S" lying on the ground near a northern New Hampshire project site. He took it home and placed it in a drawer. There the ring languished until 1996, when Barrow's wife, Leslie, came across it while looking for something else. She queried her husband and deduced that the original owner was a Stanford alumnus. She sent it to the Stanford Alumni Association, explaining where and how it was found, but after some failed attempts to ascertain its ownership, the ring was set aside.
In February, dislodged by an office move, the ring landed in the hands of Rene Spicer, '57, a veteran SAA staffer. Spicer cross-referenced its engraved initials with those of members of the Class of '68, made a reasoned guess and called Nestell.
"I was just floored," says Nestell, an engineer with MPR Associates in Alexandria, Va. "That ring was a graduation present from my grandmother, and I was sick to my heart when I realized I had lost it."
Though ring and owner are reunited, Nestell admits it's still kept in a nontraditional location: "It only fits my pinky now," he says.
