Santa Rosa man took off his ring to give his dog a bath 21 years ago and thought he’d lost it forever. Destiny had other ideas

This is the story of a lost ring, a desperate search and a dog named Sushi.

It’s also the story of serendipity, friendship and luck.

But perhaps, above all, it’s the story of enduring love and beshert — a Yiddish word that means, among other things, destiny.

It is a story that has been more than 50 years in the making, but we’ll begin last month when Hank Trione was doing yard work at his Santa Rosa home.

‘It went flying’

There was some ground cover near the front walkway that he wanted gone, and he gave one stubborn bunch a tug.

Up came the root, and with it an 8-inch knot of earth.

And the aforementioned ring.

“When I pulled the root out, it went flying,” Trione said. “It must have been entangled in the root.”

Trione put it in his pocket and kept working.

Only later did he look more closely at his find.

“I cleaned it up with an old toothbrush,” he said. “I could tell it was engraved, but my eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

He aimed his phone at the engraving and blew it up. Nope. Then he called in his 17-year-old daughter for backup.

Together, they could make out four engraved letters: B-a-r-b. And a date: 8-6-72.

Curious, Trione decided to dig up something else: The file, replete with ownership documents and pulled permits from past owners, that he got when he bought the house on East Foothill Drive four years ago.

The previous owner’s name wasn’t Barbara, but the owners before that were Barbara and Gary Greensweig.

Trione knew where to go next.

Lynn and Gary Leopold have lived in the house across the street since 1986. They have been neighbors and friends with the Greensweigs now for more than three decades.

So, Trione asked Lynn about the ring and if she knew how to get in touch with the Greensweigs.

She got on the phone.

“I said, are you missing a ring?” she said. “Gary’s first reaction was ‘no’ because it had been so long. I said, it says Barbara.”

There was a pause.

“They both just gasped, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

Sushi takes a bath

This is where the story goes back in time, approximately 21 years.

The Greensweigs raised two daughters and a son in that home, and were never without a dog.

Two decades ago, the dog was Sushi, a black and white Tibetan terrier who earned fame in the pages of The Press Democrat because of her near-miraculous recovery from diabetes-induced blindness.

You read that right.

It was around 2001 that Gary Greensweig was giving Sushi a bath in the backyard. Afraid the soap on his hands would cause his wedding ring to slip off, he put the gold band into his pocket.

“At the end of the dog washing event, it was no longer there,” Greensweig said.

The ring, not Sushi.

Anyone who has ever tried to bathe a dog will understand Greensweig’s use of the word “event” to describe the ordeal.

In the end, Sushi got her bath. But the wedding ring was AWOL.

Greensweig checked his pockets. He looked in the backyard grass.

“I was thinking of renting a metal detector,” he said.

They finally opted against the metal detector and just decided to replace the ring.

“After he lost it, he bought another one and I have the receipt,” Barbara Greensweig said. “That’s how I kind of know when it was lost.”

The Greensweigs lived in that home another 11 years. The lost ring never showed up.

In 2012, Gary Greensweig retired as chief medical officer at what was then St. Joseph Health and the couple moved to Montara, south of Pacifica.

The new owner of their home did a massive overhaul of the garden and yard. The lawn was pulled out, bushes and flowers were planted.

Leopold remembers yards of weed barrier covering large swathes of ground.

When Trione bought the property four years ago, he began slowly thinning some of the plantings.

That’s what he was doing a month ago when he was removing the ground cover from around the front walk, he said.

How the ring got from Sushi’s bath in the backyard to near the walkway in front of the house is a mystery.

How the ring became buried in 8 inches of hardened earth is also a mystery.

As for the forces behind its discovery, Barbara Greensweig doesn’t call it a mystery, but rather destiny.

Because by Leopold’s calculation, it was on or around July 6 that she got in touch with the Greensweigs about the ring.

And July 6 was exactly one month to the day before the Greensweigs’ 50th wedding anniversary, the day they first exchanged their rings.

A case of destiny

In telling the story, Barbara Greensweig uses the word “beshert.”

Barbara and Gary Greensweig are Jewish. The word beshert connotes destiny, the inevitable, that which is preordained.

In a piece in The Jewish Chronicle, beshert is described as applying to anything that bears “the fingerprints of divine providence.”

“But it is used most commonly about marriage and shidduchim (matches). Singles pray to ‘meet their beshert,’ their life partner, the other half of the broken eggshell with whom they will find love and fulfillment,” it reads.

Trione, the reluctant hero gardener in this story, said hearing Barbara Greensweig describe the discovery as something preordained moved him.

“I got a little choked up,” he said. “It made me feel I’m in the right place to be a part of something like that. My stars were aligned. It’s a silly little thing and for whatever reason, it made me feel good.”

The Greensweigs — two parts of the same eggshell — have been celebrating their golden anniversary in Hawaii with their kids and their grandkids all week.

Their party is 16 in all. Nothing is missing. And now, nothing is lost.

“It’s just really beautiful,” Barbara Greensweig said. “Things are meant to happen.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.