‘Never give up’: Charleston visitor finds Arkansas woman’s missing class ring

CHARLESTON, S.C. (KY3) - An Arkansas woman was recently reunited with her high school ring that had been lost more than 30 years ago in Charleston, one of two incredible finds in her family.

The story began in 1988 when Allison Medina graduated from high school in Flippin, Arkansas, a city in the Ozark Mountains. After graduation, she left to visit a friend in Charleston, South Carolina.

She decided to stay in the Charleston area, get a roommate and land a job.

She would soon meet a guy.

“We were madly in love,” Medina said. “And my mom always warned me, ‘Don’t let anyone wear your [high school] ring because they’re not going to take care of it like you do.’ Well, I did not heed that advice.”

In 1992, the relationship was lost and so was Medina’s high school ring.

Eventually, she moved to Hilton Head without that precious part of her past.

“I figured it was in a pawn shop somewhere,” she said.

But it wasn’t. That’s where Dr. James Murrell of California enters the story. Murrell took a trip down memory lane earlier this year to a place he used to call home: Charleston.

He stopped by an apartment building where he once lived.

“Which just so happened to be the same place I lived at that same time, but we didn’t know each other,” Medina said.

“I thought, let me take the car and just go see what the neighborhood looked like,” Murrell said. “So I drove over there and was just walking around the complex and just happened to look down noticing they had planted some bushes, shrubs, and things, and noticed something shiny on the ground, and I picked it up.”

Murrell made a post on Facebook: “Found this ring... does anyone know Allison, a graduate of Flippin High School, Class of 1988?”

“It blew up,” Medina said. “Facebook messages, text messages, Messenger on Facebook. I mean, everybody, ‘Is this your ring?’ ‘Is this you?’ I looked and saw the picture, and sure enough, it was my ring.”

Murrell cleaned it up, put it in a box, and sent it to Medina, complete with a note that read, “Reunited, and it feels so good.”

“It’s been 30 years,” Medina said. “Think of Charleston. Rain, dogs, animals, kids, mowing, floods, hurricane, and it’s still there.”

“Through social media, we can find things as little as this that she had lost 30 years ago,” Allison’s niece, Clara Alford, said.

But here’s where the story gets even better. Alford holds on to a ring that belonged to her father.

“He’d lost his about 25 years [ago],” Medina says. “And it was found in an old desk.”

“It’s crazy how it all happened [about] a month apart from each other and 30 years later,” Alford said.

A Flippin brother and sister both lose their class rings in the 1990s and they were both found in 2023. Some might call it a Flippin miracle.

Medina, however, has another thought.

“Our mom passed in 2007,” she said. “So we just kind of felt like that’s her saying, ‘Hey, I’m still watching you guys. I’m still with you guys.’ And you know she loved us, and we miss her.”

As for the man who found it, Murrell hopes this inspires others to do the little things that could make a big impact in someone else’s life.

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