A Successful
Sleuthing Story
By Bob Eddy

Dominic Delia of Randolph with his mystery ring. It took a determined investigation, but Delia found out just who LNF was and how his ring was in his mother's jewelry box. Postal worker Kelly Roberts waits to send the ring to its true owner. (Herald / Bob Eddy)

All over the country there are old class rings sitting in jewelry boxes. Each has a story it could tell. This is a story about one of those rings.

It wasn’t until Dominic and Walter Delia’s father moved this winter that the brothers looked into their deceased mother’s jewelry box. They found there a gold high school graduation ring marked "Rochester Class of 1970." The initials "LNF" were engraved on the inside.

Who was "LNF," and how did his ring end up with mom’s jewelry? Dominic Delia knew his mother, who died in 1988, would be no help with these questions.

"I like a good mystery, though," he admitted to The Herald, so he took the ring, hoping to track down the owner.

The first computer search revealed a "Town of Rochester" in almost all 50 states. "I sure hope this fellow lived in Vermont," Delia thought.

Meg Allen at Rochester High School here in Vermont was very helpful. She found a name matching the initials "LNF" on the 1970’s class list. Lloyd Foley graduated in that year. There was no current address on file, however.

"My heart sank when I heard that," admitted Delia. "Thirty-seven years is a long time to try and track down someone with only a name, even for a professional private investigator."

Delia is indeed an investigator, however, and wasn’t about to give up.

The Balfour Ring Company was the logical next phone call. Representative Paul Trono in Burlington had disappointing news, however. The company keeps no records going back this far.

Running a name through a detective website yielded several "L. Foleys" in Vermont, and a "Lloyd Foley" in Brushton, NY. While Dominic was betting on a Vermont location, his wife was thinking New York. The search was now a family affair.

The Vermont Foleys yielded no "Lloyds." New York proved a match, however. Bingo!

"I was happy to track down the rightful owner in Brushton, NY, especially because I wanted to find out how this ring ended up with mom’s things," Delia said.

It turns out that back in the mid-seventies, a newly-married Lloyd Foley rented an apartment from Delia’s parents in Snowsville. He was working at Waterbury Plastics at the time, but moved to New York in 1977.

"As tenants left, we would go in and strip down the apartments, repainting everything and making them first-rate," Delia said. "My mother must have found the ring and, thinking Mr. Foley would return for it, put it in her jewelry box for safe keeping. He never came back, called, or wrote, however, and the ring just sat there, forgotten."

It wasn’t forgotten by Lloyd Foley, though. He admitted that Delia’s call brought forth tears.

"I was thinking about that ring again a few days before Mr. Delia’s call; how I wished I’d never lost it. I can’t believe he returned it after all this time."

The Foleys now have two children, four grandchildren, and a ring for the Rochester High School Class of 1970. It is, you guessed it, safely placed in a jewelry box out there in Brushton, NY.

As for Dominic Delia, this story is the satisfying conclusion of another event in his own life.

"I lost my class ring at the bottom of Silver Lake, just after high school," he related. It sat there for over a year, until a good Samaritan returned it to me while I was serving with the US Army in Germany. I’ll always remember how great it felt to get it back. Now I’ve had a chance to return the favor."

And how did Delia’s ring get to the bottom of Silver Lake? Well, that’s the subject of another story.