Smith: High school ring fished out of Spring Lake, 25 years later

Wait! You haven’t read what happened to Healdsburg native and Ursuline High alum Pamela Bell Simmons.

Days ago, Simmons read in this space about the astonished Santa Rosa woman whose high school ring, which she’d lost in Clear Lake 55 years ago, was returned by a metal detector hobbyist named Michael Curl.

The same day that story ran, Pam Simmons had an appointment to meet with Curl. He’d found her class ring too, also under water, and he was eager to give it to her.

Simmons, part of Healdsburg’s Bell Ambulance family, graduated from the former Ursuline girls’ school in 1972.

Jump forward 18 years. In 1990, Simmons mentioned to her husband, Brad, that she felt she was being watched when she left home in the mornings. It seems she was.

Brad Simmons returned home one afternoon to find much of the house ransacked. It crushed his wife to discover that someone had broken in and stolen a number of items, many of them jewelry. One of them, her class ring.

Almost 25 years had passed when an administrator at Cardinal Newman High, which went co-ed after Ursuline closed in 2011, answered a call the other day from Curl, the treasure hunter. With his submersible metal detector, he’d found, at Spring Lake Regional Park, a ‘72 Ursuline High ring engraved inside with the initials PAB.

Word soon reached the former Pamela Augustina Bell. Today she’s hugely grateful to Curl for meeting with her and Brad and giving her the ring.

“It looks the way it did the last time I wore it,” she said. But it feels different.

“It apparently means even more than I remembered.”

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CHOCOLATES ARE FINE but a heart-melting Valentine’s Day gift available only in Santa Rosa contains not one calorie.

It’s a singing valentine by quartets of students in Santa Rosa High’s ambitious and quite astonishing concert choir.

The talented teens raise essential funds for the ArtQuest vocal-music program by dressing in tuxedos and gowns and stepping out on both Friday the 13th and on Valentine’s Day.

Order a singing valentine by visiting srhschoral.org/ or calling 547-9000 and they’ll surprise your sweetheart with a rare treat. Your cost: 50 bucks.

The singers will appear before your unsuspecting Valentine, perform three a capella songs and offer up a flower and a custom card.

If necessary, and it probably will be, they may also come up with a Kleenex.

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ALSO ON FEB. 14, people determined to cure humanity of one of its ugliest defects will join their voices with others around the globe to demand an end to violence against women.

From 2:30 to 6 p.m. at the Friedman Event Center, women and men will share stories of physical, sexual and other abuse and of means of to overcome it. There will be taiko drumming, singing and the sharing of ideas for changing the paradigm that breeds or allows violence.

The Valentine’s Day event is the first local public gathering inspired by the One Billion Rising Revolution, a global call for a shift in thinking and behavior.

It’s hosted by partners that include Sonoma County’s Commission on the Status of Women and the local chapter of the United Nations Association. Of course, the event is free.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.