Feb 13, 2018 3 min read

The new year arrived with a pleasant surprise for Emily Copas.

She received a Jan. 1 call from Barb Edgar, her best friend when both attended Peters Township High School and someone she hadn’t spoken with for a long time. So naturally, they had a lot of catching up to do.

“Barb and I talked for probably an hour and a half,” Copas said, “before she told me, ‘Oh, by the way, I have a surprise for you. Remember when you lost your class ring? Somebody found it.'”

In this case, “surprise” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“I was a junior in high school when I lost my class ring at Kennywood Park, about a month and a half after my parents bought it,” Copas recalled. “For $35, which was a lot of money in ’66.”

Yes, it’s been nearly 52 years since she returned from her class trip ringless. And it’s been a few weeks since Randy Stonemark, the gentleman who found the keepsake in Peterswood Park, mailed it to her where she’s staying in Florida.

“Barb called me and told me and told me about the ring, so I called Randy and told him where I was,” she said. “He was very nice and sent me the ring. I told him I would pay for the postage, and he said, ‘No, no, no. If you send me money, I’m going to send it right back.'”

How the ring got from West Mifflin to Peters Township half a century later remains a mystery, but Stonemark was determined to find its owner. The initials “ERS” – Emily’s maiden name is Stacey – and “Class of 1967” led him to a likely candidate, but he had no idea where to find her.

“When I graduated from high school, my dad got transferred. And so I just went ahead and moved with them because I hadn’t really decided what I wanted to do yet, anyway,” Copas recalled. “And so the friends I had in high school kind of lost contact with me, because I moved to West Virginia and got married.”

Edgar, née Doty, had been in her wedding, after which Emily’s last name was Gilmore. But she eventually got divorced and then remarried, once again emerging with a new surname while making her home in Ohio.

Through the magic of social media, Edgar connected with Stacey Gilmore Romine, Emily’s daughter, who provided the information for her to make the New Year’s Day call.

Meanwhile, Stonemark had seen Edgar’s husband, Richard, at church and asked him, “Didn’t your wife used to run around with Emily Stacey? Does she know where she is?”

Copas is grateful that he asked, and even more so that he made such Herculean efforts to return the ring.

“I was going to thank him on Facebook,” she said, “and I thought, that’s just going to be for the people we know on Facebook.”

Instead, here’s a big thank you from Emily Stacey Copas to Randy Stonemark, for everyone to see.

Meanwhile, she also is grateful to have reconnected with her friend.

“I don’t know if it’s the class ring I was so thrilled to get back, or Barb,” Copas said. “I got ’em both back.”