Laconia High School lost-and-found story has a ring to it

BELMONT — It wasn’t likely worth much, the ring that Julie Ann Pagliarulo found buried on her property. But to the right person, it would be invaluable. The problem was, it took her about 25 years to find him.

“Many years ago, around ‘94 or ‘95, I was gardening,” said Pagliarulo. She and her husband had recently moved into a home on Peter Court in Belmont, and she was putting in a garden under the picture window. Around 4 inches deep, she discovered something.

“I dug up a ring, a Laconia High School class ring,” she said.

Pagliarulo cleaned it off, and could read the name “Kyle” and the year “1989,” but, at that time, she didn’t have the internet, nor did she have time to chase down the mystery, as she was raising six children. So she put it away for a while.

That ring resurfaced last week, when she was cleaning out a drawer. Pagliarulo, with more time and access to information on her hands, called Laconia High School and, with help from the librarian, determined that there was one Kyle in the Class of 1989. She then took that name to Facebook, and was communicating with Kyle Smith later that same day.

Smith, a lifelong resident of Laconia, said that Pagliarulo first only said that she had something that she thought was his.

“She was kind of coy about it, didn’t want to give it away what it was,” Smith said. She was concerned that the ring wouldn’t go to the right Kyle, but after he passed her initial screening, she sent him a photo of the ring. When Smith described a chip in the stone, she knew she had found the owner.

Smith said he was raised by a single mother and worked at Walter’s Meat Market during his high school years. That’s how he earned enough to pay for the ring, a way to express his school spirit even though he wasn’t a school athlete. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t athletic, though. Smith did a lot of mountain biking in his high school years, including over Mile Hill Road into the section of Belmont where Pagliarulo found the ring.

Smith said he got the ring when he was a junior, and promptly lost it. He didn’t immediately realize it was missing, though, so his attempts to find it were unsuccessful.

“I figured I’d never see it again,” Smith said.

Now 51, Smith said he has lost the “craziness” of his teenaged self, but still has much in common with the version of himself that bought, then lost, the ring. At Walter’s, he enjoyed working with food, and today he works as a chef at the Taylor Community. He still mountain bikes, too, often taking the WOW Trail to the Belmont town line, then cycling along the shore of Lake Winnisquam.

He would think of his class ring every once in a while, he said, including as recently as six months ago. But he had long given up hope of being reunited with it, he said, which was why he was so surprised by Pagliarulo’s contact.

“I was so excited, I couldn’t believe it, after so long,” he said. He doesn’t remember how much it cost, probably not much, he figures.

“It’s probably just stainless steel, worthless, but it means something to me,” he said, adding that he’s wearing it on his finger again, at least for the time being.

The experience was significant for Pagliarulo as well.

“I just kind of babysat that ring, so to speak. I wasn’t going to sell it or pawn it off, but when I was getting the house together, that ring popped into my mind,” Pagliarulo said. “I’m glad, in my lifetime, that I could bring that kind of happiness to a person. How often do you have an experience like that, that you can share with anyone? It was very gratifying to recover something and give it to the rightful owner, even if it is after all these years. His gratitude was just so wonderful, it kept filling my heart over and over.”