Ring
High School ring (representative image) (Flickr/Westside Shooter)

A man who lost his high school ring 40 years ago has found it again, thanks to Facebook.

Richard Hale, who attended O'Keefe High School in Atlanta, accidentally threw his class ring out of a car window and always regretted the loss. Unfortunately for him, the school where he studied closed down in 1974, making a replacement impossible.

"We were riding around with friends and for some reason, I tossed something out the window, and when I did, I thought, 'Oh no my ring is gone'," he told My Fox Atlanta.

Initially, he gave the ring to his high school sweetheart (now his wife) but she returned it, ironically, for fear of losing it!

"I was scared I was going to lose it," she told MyFoxAtlanta.com, "So I gave it back to him, and he loses it."

"My mother and daddy sacrificed to pay for it," Hale said.

Recently, Hale's brother stumbled on a picture of the ring on Facebook and passed on the information to Hale. It appears the ring was found by Ellen Ramey, now a resident of Clayton, Georgia, who wished to return it to its rightful owner.

"My mother had a class ring," Ramey said, "I wore it to school and lost it, and it just stayed in my mind that it was important that these people get their ring back."

Ramey and Hale connected on Facebook and Hale now has his ring back. He puts it on every night when he gets home from work.