PANTEGO — How does a class ring lost at a local county fair wind up 600 miles away in Ohio?

That’s a good question.

“It is one of those unbelievable stories,” said Jenny Respess Hollowell with a shake of her head.

Respess still hasn’t ferreted out all the details, but once she got wind of the story she set to work like a Beaufort County version of Nancy Drew hot on the trail of an exciting mystery.

Back in late June, Respess received an email from an Ohio resident named Christine Graves, who it seems literally stumbled across a Pantego High School ring belonging to a member of the class of 1952. Twenty years had passed since Graves found the ring; she had been unable to find its owner after a couple of aborted attempts over the years.

Then she happened upon the website for the Pantego Academy Historical Museum, which allowed her to make Hollowell’s acquaintance.

Through Graves’ tenacity and Hollowell’s talent for tracking down information, the ring’s original owner has been located. But Hollowell is keeping that information a secret until she has ring in hand and can arrange a meeting to present it to its rightful owner.

But the real mystery has yet to be solved.

According to Hollowell, the original owner of the ring worked hard in tobacco in order to pay for that treasured memento of high school. Then one day she decided to visit the Beaufort County Fair in Washington.

“She took the ring off and put it in her pocket so she wouldn’t lose it,” Hollowell said. “But she went on a ride that turned upside down and the ring fell out of her pocket and was lost.”

That was more than 60 years ago and the ring remained unaccounted for. Unbeknownst to its owner, a little girl playing outside found the ring.

“I lived in a little town called Minerva in Ohio,” Graves wrote in an email to Hollowell. “I was across the street playing in a little creek and I saw something, and it was a class ring.”

The youngster had no way of tracking down the owner so she put the ring away for safekeeping. Eventually she did contact school officials in Pantego, Texas, but they told her the ring could not possibly have come from there since the town did not have a high school by that name in 1952.

More recently, after running across the ring yet again while going through her jewelry boxes, Graves decided to attempt to find the owner one more time. This time luck was on her side and she connected with Hollowell.

Graves is preparing to ship the ring to Hollowell, who is looking forward to presenting it to its owner. Hollowell added that this may not have been possible if the PantegoAcademy Historical Museum had not recently updated its website.

“This came totally out of the blue as a result of our new web page,” she said with pride.

But one big part of the mystery remains unsolved. Exactly how did a ring lost in Beaufort County in 1952-53 turn up decades later in Ohio?

Hollowell has a theory.

“I’m inclined to think the ring got wedged in a piece of equipment at the fair and it made its way to Ohio,” she said. “But that is something we will probably never know.”

In the meantime, Hollowell is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the ring.

And she’s promised to give readers of the Washington Daily News an update once the ring is back on the finger of that 1952 graduate of Pantego High School.