ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

South Florida woman reunited with her dog after 7 years

HOMESTEAD, Fla.

A South Florida woman has been reunited with her Boston Terrier who ran away seven years ago.

WFOR-TV reported that Julie Arango got a call recently saying her dog, Lola, who ran away from her home in southwest Miami-Dade County seven years ago after digging a hole under a fence, has been found.

Linda Gall, a former veterinary technician, told the station someone was giving Lola away for free on Craigslist after caring for her for almost seven years. Gall took Lola to a vet, discovered the info on the microchip and got in touch with Arango, her former owner. Arango says she never thought she would see her dog again.

Last Monday, Arango and her daughter, 19-year-old Celina Papas, drove to Fort Lauderdale to be reunited with their long-lost pet.

New Mexico couple gets back wedding rings lost since 1960s

LAS CRUCES, N.M.

It’s been decades since Ofelia Kirker lost her wedding rings, but she’ll be wearing the treasured jewelry for her 64th wedding anniversary.

“It feels like we’re getting married again,” said her 83-year-old husband, Robert Kirker.

It’s “unbelievable to be wearing them again,” said Ofelia Kirker, 82. “They had been gone for so long. It’s wonderful to have them back.”

She believes the rings tumbled out of her pocket in the 1960s while she was living in the Grant County village of Santa Clara, reported the Las Cruces Sun-News.

They were unearthed in a yard there years ago and have finally made their way back to her thanks to an observant yard worker, one woman’s sharp memory and her daughter’s persistence.

Kirker had a habit of taking the matching white gold and diamond rings off and wrapping them in tissues while she cooked, placing the tissues in her pocket. “I said, ‘Be more careful with your rings or you’ll lose them,’” said her husband, Robert Kirker.

And then she lost them. She remembered having them in her pocket at church and suspected they had fallen near the home of Romana Gutierrez, where the couple always parked before celebrating Sunday Mass.

Gutierrez’s daughter, Edna Salas, said the rings were unearthed years later when Gutierrez hired someone to clean her yard.

By that time, the Kirkers had left Santa Clara. Gutierrez didn’t know how to reach them, said Salas, so she put the jewelry in a small blue box.

Salas found that box in April.

“It puzzled me because I knew they weren’t my mom’s rings,” she said. “So I got on the phone, and I called my mom and asked her about the rings. She said those wedding rings belong to Ofelia Kirker.”

Salas said her mother, who is now 90, was happy for the Kirkers.

Associated Press