Lost Poway High class ring found 27 years later

Kelley Kerscher (then Kelley Crawford) was a junior at Poway High School when she lost her Class of 1988 ring. Now, she’s been reunited with it thanks to a chance find and the hard work of several Poway alumni.

Kerscher was playing in the annual Powder Puff football game with her fellow juniors against the Poway High senior girls at Twin Peaks Middle School when the ring was lost in 1987. She’d asked a friend to hold on to the ring for her while she played, and in the commotion of cheering, the ring fell out of the friend’s pocket and was lost.

“I was devastated,” said Kerscher. “(Having a class ring) was a big deal at 16.”

Though Kerscher and her family rented a metal detector and search the field at Twin Peaks, they didn’t find her ring.

It wasn’t until a over quarter of a century later that Kerscher would see her ring again.

It was found by Tony Eisenhower, a Poway resident, and his son Jim, a PHS grad visiting from Idaho. “Tony does metal detecting as a hobby,” said Kerscher, who now lives in San Marcos with her husband and three children, where they own a small business.

Though Eisenhower tried to find the ring’s owner, he didn’t meet with much success. It was then that Jim Eisenhower contacted Larry Ott, the president of the Poway High School Alumni Association for help.

They knew that it was a Class of 1988 ring, it was a female’s ring, and that it had the initials KLC inscribed inside the band, still visible after decades in the ground.

Ott said he looked in the 1988 yearbook the Alumni Association had in the school’s museum, and found out that there had been four senior girls with the initials KC in 1988. “One of my Facebooks friends was friends with one of the candidates,” said Ott, “so I contacted her.”

“I didn’t think much about my ring (since I lost it) until I got the Facebook message saying someone had found it,” said Kerscher. “It really reinforced my belief in the goodness of mankind, that they would go to so much extra effort to find me. It’s so wonderful.”

Kerscher said the ring, amazingly enough, looks almost exactly like it did the day she lost it. “I thought it would be damaged, but even the engraving is still there,” she said.

Though Kerscher wasn’t able to meet Jim Eisenhower in person before he returned to Idaho, her husband met with him to pick up the ring. “We offered him a reward, but he refused. He said reuniting the ring with its owner was all the reward he needed,” she said.

Kerscher said she’s going to put the ring on a chain and wear it around her neck, since it doesn’t fit her finger any more. “I think it’s pretty lucky,” she said. “Things like this don’t just happen, it’s my lucky charm.”

She said she is also considering donating it to the Poway High School museum, since it has such a great story attached to it. “I haven’t had that conversation yet, but I’ve considered it,” said Kerscher.

Kerscher said that the whole experience has been amazing. “A lot of people worked together to get my ring back to me,” she said. “It’s been just amazing. I still can’t believe it.”