Alicia Wheeler was with her family at the St Clair playground on a beautiful summer day on January 8.
Such was the scorching sun, she took her wedding, engagement and anniversary rings off to put sunscreen on her daughter Bessie (11 months).
The family then stayed at the park for three hours, with friends.
But when she got home she immediately realised she had left her rings at the playground.
‘‘I got back in the car and went back there. I searched everywhere. I asked people about them and they helped looking. I rang my friends, see if they had them. But I just couldn’t find them.
‘‘I just felt so stressed. Just so annoyed at myself. ’’
But they could not be found.
‘‘He said come back to your family and he’d have a look. So he went down there, got three big black sacks and poured all the rubbish from the bins into them. We poured all the rubbish he had on to a tarpaulin to look through at home. But we still could not find them.’’
The next morning, she bought her two sons, Reggie (7) and Chester (5), a couple of metal detectors and they went down to the playground. But still no success.
‘‘I just felt so sad. I was crushed what had happened. I was sure I had put them on the edge of the pram. But we just couldn’t find them.’’
But she did not raise the white flag — she went all in.
‘‘We got to know every blade of grass in that playground. I would come up with things in the middle of the night what might have happened to them. Got an idea and had to do it. We drained the washing machine filters. Looked everywhere, everywhere round the house, in the car.
‘‘I just kept on looking. There were really special to me, so I would not give up.
‘‘We went to Cash Converters and got to know them. Scrolled social media. We thought the seagulls might have taken them.’’
With time marching on, the rings had vanished into thin air.
The family went to Queenstown over Easter and about a week later a police officer from Queenstown contacted Mrs Wheeler saying she had found some lost property of hers.
‘‘I thought it might have been a jacket one of the kids had lost when we were over there. But then she said it was three rings.’’
They had turned up in a place 280km from where they were lost.
It turned out an English tourist picked them up that afternoon at the park when she was tying her shoe laces.
The tourist tried to advertise she had found them and put them on a website. But nothing eventuated and she went back to Queenstown where she was staying with family.
They sat in her pocket for weeks and just before she was heading home she realised she still had them, so went to the Arrowtown police station. The officer then searched the police records and came up with Mrs Wheeler’s file.
They were returned and it was smiles, well more than smiles — over the moon is the term.
‘‘I was just so happy to have them back. I didn’t think I would miss them as much as I did. And it makes for a great story.’’
