Ring in hand, he could think of nothing else except for seeing the look on his girlfriend’s face when he would ask her to wear it. Of course when he asked she excitedly jammed it onto her finger, claiming to never take it off. Little did Robby Burnett know that she meant the statement literally, and that it would be 15 years before he would see his class ring again.

Robby, a 1995 Randall High graduate, said that when he received his school ring he gave it to his longtime girlfriend to wear.

 “The relationship was good for about a year and a half,” Robby said. “Everything was great and we thought we were in love.”

However, Robby said the relationship abruptly ended after he caught his girlfriend cheating.

“That was the last night that I saw her face,” Robby said. “I didn’t want to see her again, but she had a lot of my stuff.  She had some of my clothes, movies, CD’s and of course my class ring so I asked her to leave everything on her porch.”

When Robby arrived, a box full of their memories together was waiting. Inside was everything that they shared. That was, everything except his class ring.

“(I suspected that) she wanted to see me again and that was why she kept the ring,” Robby said. “To me, it would be worse to see her and get (the ring) back than to never see either of them again. So, I counted my losses and moved on.”    

Shortly after the break-up, Robby moved to attend The Art Institute of Dallas and has stayed in the metroplex ever since.

“I received a call from an old buddy of mine about five years later,” Robby said. “He told me that he had gotten my class ring back from (my ex-girlfriend).”

At that time, Robby was attending school year-round and said that he rarely came back to Amarillo. By the time that he returned, his buddy had misplaced the ring.

It was another 10 years before Robby thought about his class ring again. June Hamilton, 76, and her son were sitting at Sonic in Forney, a suburb of Dallas, when she noticed a ring gleaming in the sunlight. 

“It was lying on the concrete,” June said. “I immediately knew that it was a class ring. I asked my son to get out and pick it up. I would have hated to see someone run over it and destroy it.”

June took the ring home, polished it and immediately started searching for its owner. Engraved on the ring was the year 1995 and the words Randall High School and Robby Burnett. June called every high school within 100 miles of Forney talking to principals and coaches in an effort to locate a school by the name of Randall High.

“I looked for the owner of the ring for about a year,” June said. “I just couldn’t discard that ring. I just felt deep in my heart that a young man was missing this ring.”

At a dead end and frustrated, June told the story to a friend who ended up finding contact information for Randall High School via the internet. June was eventually transferred to Jo Beth Nepper, Robby’s former art teacher.

“Nepper ‘Googled’ me, found me, called my company 888 number, and reached me all within a couple of hours,” Robby said. “When I called June and told her who I was, she just about fell out of her chair. She was floored by how the internet helped. She asked me ‘What is Google?’”

June said that she didn’t know how to use a computer and had never thought about being able to locate Robby with the help of the internet.

“(The real shock came) when I learned where June found my ring,” Robby said. “The Sonic was only one block from a house that I once lived in. June found the ring three months before I moved out of the house. The fact that the ring was found several hundred miles from where it was lost and only one block from my house is just incredible. What are the odds of that happening?”

Days later, June opened her front door to a smiling Robby holding a bouquet full of fall colored flowers.

“I never imagined that a stranger would put forth so much effort to find someone to return a piece of jewelry,” Robby said. “I think if we all learn anything from this story, it’s that with just a little effort, we can show people that we care about their happiness. (June) cared about a stranger, which doesn’t happen anymore. She is truly a desert rose.”