St. Francis Xavier grad reunited with X-ring after it turns up at Dartmouth thrift store

Thanks to a Facebook post and a group of former students, St. Francis Xavier University graduate Becky Savoie has been reunited with her X-ring after seven years.

The ring was discovered on Jan. 2 at a Value Village location in Dartmouth, N.S.

Shanna Hopkins, the director of the Antigonish university's alumni association, said she was tagged in the comments of a Facebook post someone had made about finding the ring.

She said she wanted to help in the search for the ring's owner.

"All these rings are special to us, but this one in particular was one of my classmates because it was a 2001 ring, the same year I graduated," Hopkins said.

She said the university probably receives a call every month about a lost ring, but most are never located.

Hopkins asked the store for details about the ring. 

A blurry inscription looked like Becky B. She started looking at the yearbook for someone with that name.

"Couldn't find anything," she said. "So I actually called one of my classmates who actually graduated in the same year as well.…  And she said, 'Well, the only Becky I know is Becky Carruthers, now Becky Savoie.'"

The information for Savoie on the alumni association's database was out of date, so she reached out on Facebook instead.

Savoie, who lives in Dartmouth, answered almost immediately. 

She said she had spent the last few years looking for the ring but had lost hope of ever finding it. She was looking instead to replace it.

After confirming with Hopkins that the ring belonged to her, a representative of the university who was in Dartmouth was able to pick it up and take it to her.

"It kind of brought me back [to] the X-ring ceremony," Savoie said. "Every grad looks forward to it. It's pretty emotional.

"It's just such a culmination of your time and kind of marks a period before you go into the real world."

She also confirmed with Hopkins that the inscription actually said Becky B.A., for her bachelor of arts degree.

The last time she had seen her ring was when her toddler got ahold of it.

She thinks the ring got mixed in with some of her daughter's toys that were recently donated to Value Village.

Regardless of how the ring got there, Savoie is thankful that the community was able to track her down and return it to her, which she said felt like her own delayed Christmas miracle.