News-Record.com

Two weeks after a customer found a 1963 high school ring outside their salon, Lorrie Hancock and Donna Cauthren tracked down the owner - in Maine.

The only question left is how the ring ended up in the parking lot of E-llusions Styling and Tanning Salon.

"I'd love to know," Cauthren said.

After the customer gave them the ring, Hancock's daughter went online to track down Escambia High School, the name carved on it.

Cauthren called the school, in Florida, to tell them about the ring and the initials etched along the inside of the gold ring, PLL.

A classmate, who happened to be researching his graduating class, identified the owner as Phyllis Webb, whose maiden name was Long.

"I wasn't aware it was gone," Webb said.

She thought it was still inside the case.

Then her daughter admitted that when their family lived in Winston-Salem in the 1980s she would sneak the ring out of the case to wear.

Webb thinks she must have lost it while they lived in North Carolina.

She's not sure if her daughter's teenage exploits ever brought her as far as Gibsonville.

"The statute of limitations ... has already run out" on quizzing her 37-year-old daughter about that, she joked.

The salon owners were "sweet and thoughtful" to track her down to return the ring, Webb said.

"I was touched ... that they would go to that trouble," she said.

Contact Jamie Kennedy Jones at 449-4610 or jamie.kennedy@news-record.com.