SOUTHGATE, Mich. – Gary Franklin and his family were on vacation in Playa del Carmen and doing some snorkeling in the Gulf of Mexico when Franklin felt his University of Michigan class ring slip off his finger.

“All of a sudden it just slipped and I was trying to find it in the water but I couldn’t see it,” Franklin said.

That ring had been a gift to himself in 2012 after he got his finance degree from the University of Michigan Dearborn. He went back to school while working full time and raising his family.

“It just reminds me of a lot of hard work I put in to make it all happen,” Franklin said.

He wears that ring on his right hand and his wedding ring on his left, always. The Franklin family returned from Mexico and a few days later Gary starts getting texts.

A man from Arizona was snorkeling in the same spot and saw the ring, saw that it was engraved with the name Gary Franklin and decided he’d try to reunite the ring with its owner.

He put up a post on Facebook and asked a friend in Michigan to get the word out; it worked.

“My heart just dropped and I’m looking at it and just gasped, ‘someone found my ring,’” Franklin said.

Franklin’s not on Facebook but his wife, Nekea, is. She reached out to the man who made the post and the next thing you know, the symbol of all that work is back at home and on his hand.

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