Three years missing, wedding ring returned to MN woman

Three years ago, Vicki Wilner of Cleveland, Minn., misplaced her wedding ring while on a trip to Arizona. She looked everywhere for it but finally gave up any hope of finding it.

She knows now that it was mixed in with some change. And she’d actually brought it back from Arizona.

When she or her husband dumped some loose change into an old Sam’s Club cheese balls container, the ring went in, too, and sat for several years, the Mankato Free Press says.

A couple of weeks ago, with the cheese ball container overflowing with change, Wilner dumped most of it into the First National Bank change machine in Mankato, got her receipt and went on her way.

When bank employee Jessica Oas later investigated why the machine stopped working, she found the ring sitting on top of a bag of pennies. The malfunction was unrelated to the ring, apparently.

Bank officer Jay Buboltz examined surveillance photos to try to identify who had used the machine last and distributed the picture to a branch in St. Peter, Minn., where Wilner’s daughter, Kayleigh Pearson, works and identified her mother.

Wilner figures she must’ve taken the ring off in Arizona and put it on a nightstand with some change, which her husband might’ve scooped up and pocketed.

After three years, the ring was back on Wilner’s finger in time for Thanksgiving.