One man’s trash is another man’s treasure — in this case, a long-lost class ring.
For custodian Brian Rizzo, it was just another day at the office, cleaning up debris in the woods surrounding the Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School in Croton, New York.
Rizzo, 39, was sifting through discarded trash, mostly glass and other debris, when he spotted something out of the ordinary poking out — something shiny.
“It looked like a band, but I thought, ‘There’s no way there’s a ring out here.’ ”
Still, Rizzo brought the mud-caked find back to his office and soaked the specimen in some soap and water.
What emerged were the words “Croton-Harmon School,” followed by the year 1979. He thought to himself, “Usually people put their initials in the band.” After some more polishing, he found the letters DPM.
And that’s when the real work started.
Rizzo went to the town library and scoured through old yearbooks to discover the owner, Daniel Patric Macrini.
But it wasn’t easy to track down Macrini, now a chef in Tennessee.
Rizzo doggedly reached out to Macrini and his family members on Facebook, but never heard back.
After some tenacious sleuthing, he found Macrini’s place of work and left a message for him, explaining he found something that might mean a lot to the Croton alum.
Less than 30 minutes later Rizzo heard back.
“I hadn’t thought about the ring for years,” says Macini, a 57-year-old father of five and grandfather of 11 who works as a dietician director in a senior living community in Franklin, TN.
“My first thought was, ‘This is so unbelievable that it could be found after 40 years.’ ”
For Macrini, who graduated from Croton-Harmon High School 40 years ago, his 1979 class ring was a fond memory. “I liked that ring so much — for the short time I had it.”
The high school athlete, who played varsity football, baseball and track and field, figures he took it off for one of his sports practices and couldn’t retrace his steps.
“It’s an awesome feeling — it truly brought me back.”
Rizzo and his wife picked out a flashy box to put the ring in before sending it to its rightful owner. “It looks exactly the same,” Macrini says, adding that the stone is flawless and without any scratches.
“After 40 years, I wish I looked half as good as this ring looks,” he says with a chuckle.
Still, decades later, nothing fits like a glove anymore.
“It only fits one of my fingers,” he says. “[But] in this world, where there seems to be fewer acts of kindness, this restored my faith in the humanness. It brought back a really beautiful piece of the beautiful place I grew up in.”
It’s all in a day’s work for Rizzo. “Some people said, ‘I’m surprised you gave it back.’ But it’s not mine — it’s a piece of someone that’s been missing.”
Macrini, who plans to return home for his 40th high school reunion in October, has one thing on his agenda — to give Brian a hug.