Colorado student unites Kansas woman with lost treasure two decades later

A Colorado student united a Kansas woman with her high school ring she had misplaced two decades ago.

Rachel Robinson found the ring as a little girl in a park near Kansas City, Missouri. She pocketed the ring and put it in her “baby box.”

“I knew it had a little picture on it, and I thought, ‘Oooh, that’s fancy,’ like maybe a queen’s ring,” she said.

Last week, she rediscovered the box while going through old things.

“It was at the bottom of the box,” said Robinson.

She was determined to reunite the ring with its owner.

Her search lead her to Lewis-Palmer High School in Monument. The ring belong to one of its graduates.

Robinson contacted the school, and the school passed along the assignment to Tana Lucido. Lucido is a social studies teacher and co-supervisor for Rho Gamma, Social Studies Honor Society.

Her student, Brian Tims, was eager to volunteer.

“Just to solve the mystery, because I don’t like having things unfinished,” said Tims.

Tims started with old yearbooks. He knew the ring’s owner graduated from the school in 1957 and had the initials “L.C.”

The 1957 yearbook was missing, but Tims found only one junior in the class pictured in the 1956 yearbook with the initials “L.C.” Her name was Linda Crosslen.

But Tims said that was the easy part.

“The hardest part was trying to find her married name, because we have her maiden name,” said Tims. “We were able to get the 1950 census, and from there, we found her parents’ names.”

By the end of his eighth period, Tims and his two friends determined the ring belonged toLinda Flesher. Flesher now lives in the Kansas City area.

Lucido put Flesher in contact with Robinson. It turns out Flesher didn’t realize it was missing until several months ago when she went to fetch her ring to show her teenage grandson.

Flesher said seeing her ring reminds her of old high school crushes and football games.

Tims said it was a cool experience, and it meant a lot to get the ring back to Flesher.

“The whole mystery solved before the bell rang,” said Tims.

Tims has not spoken to Flesher, but he is glad to hear she is thrilled to get the high school memento back.