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Owner Reunited 40 Years Later With Lost Miramar High Class Ring

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SUNRISE (CBSMiami) - It only took 40 years for some amateur sleuths to return a lost class ring to its rightful owner.

Albert Berkowitz was handed a 1974 Miramar High School ring by his mother in the 1970s. From the day he received the ring, Berkowitz worked hard to find the owner.

The Sun Sentinel ran an article detailing Berkowitz's quest to find BJG – the initials engraved on the ring.

After reading the piece, graduates from Miramar High School cracked open their 1974 yearbooks in hopes of finding this elusive classmate.

Cheryl Bierer, who graduated from Miramar in 1976, happened to have the 1974 yearbook. She pieced together that BJG was Barry J. Greenfield – the only male student from the 1974 Miramar graduating class to have those initials.

"If I lost my class ring, I would have been devastated," she told the Sun Sentinel. "I would want it back."

Greenfield, 60, who now lives in Sunrise, couldn't believe the news.

"If I had the ring, I must have lost it as soon as I got it," he said. "I wasn't the brightest duck on the pond at the time."

Berkowitz's mother worked for more than 20 years at the Konover Hotel in Miami Beach where conventions, banquets, proms and special events were held. Berkowitz thinks a worker found the ring and turned it into his mother after one of the hotel's events.

"I'm happy that we found the owner," Berkowitz said.

As happy as Berkowitz might be that he solved the mystery of who owned the ring, one question still remains:  How did the class ring go from Miramar to Miami?

"I can't place myself in downtown Miami at that time," Greenfield said.

Greenfield said he only came forward to claim the ring because he wanted to give Berkowitz some closure.

"It would be nice for him to close the door on this and say, 'I did that even though it took me 40 years,'" Greenfield joked.

Perhaps now Greenfield and Berkowitz can team up to solve how the ring was lost in the first place.

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