"Meant to be": Magical moment mum finds lost ring 15 years later
Some stories are so unbelievable that it seems like divine intervention played a part in making them happen.
Samantha was only eight or nine years old when she lost a ring that her parents gave her for Christmas, only to miraculously find it 15 years later.
She recalled the remarkable story of her lost ring on Nova 96.9's Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie.
"So when I was about eight or nine, it was Christmas time, and we were holidaying up at Umina Beach Caravan Park," Samantha began.
"I was in the surf, and my mum and dad had bought me this beautiful little first diamond ring for Christmas, and I was sort of in the waves up to sort of my knees, and I thought, Oh, I better take my ring off and put it around my necklace, because if I get dumped or under the waves, I might lose it."
Samantha recalled that she was in the middle of taking her ring off when a "freak wave" came and knocked her over, causing her to drop the ring in the ocean.
"I'm crying... my mum's crying, we're all crying, and I lost the ring," she said.
15 years later she returned to the same beach with her own kids, when things took a turn for the better.
"My daughter's collecting shells, and she picks up this big shell, and I said, 'Oh, that's beautiful. Like, that's a big one. We don't find them up this way'," she told the radio hosts.
"And she said, 'Oh, hang on. I think there's like a creature or something in it'... So I said 'Put it down, put it down', and I picked it up and just make sure she wasn't going to get bitten or anything.
"And I looked inside, and my ring was inside the shell."
Samantha told the hosts that she remembered her mum giving her the ring and telling her "when you grow up and you have a daughter, you can give this to her."
"When we found it, I think I cried for like, a week, it's a story that we still don't believe."
Radio hosts Kate, Fitzy and Wippa were all in shock, with Kate telling the mum that the ring was "meant to be" with her.
"Well, the funny thing is, my mum, actually, at the moment, is palative," Samantha shared.
"She's very, very unwell, and out of everything that she does remember, she still remembers that story.
"She'll still say to me, 'don't you ever get rid of that ring'. And I'm like, my daughter's got it in a box at home, and she's not even allowed to wear it."
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