Quick Take
UC Santa Cruz coastal scientist Gary Griggs sees a scientific mystery in two lost-and-found class rings — including one buried for 44 years at Main Beach. Griggs says the stories challenge assumptions about coastal sand movement, raising new questions about how objects can remain so close to where they were lost despite decades of shifting shorelines.
When UC Santa Cruz ocean expert Gary Griggs read this week about a ring found on a local beach 28 years after it was lost in the water, he was struck by the similarities to another story he’s told his students for more than two decades about a long-lost ring found on the beach.
For years, Griggs, 81, has told students in his “beaches and coasts” course about a Redwood City couple who lost a class ring at Main Beach in 1958. The ring was lost for 44 years until 2002, when someone found it less than 100 yards away from where it disappeared and returned it to the couple, who had since gotten married.
For Griggs, the tale is more than just “a cute story” – it creates new questions about how sand transforms the coastline. Why would a ring be recovered so close to where it was lost, and after so much time, considering the impacts of erosion, sand transport and recent storms?
“For me as a scientist, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute. How could that have happened?’” he said. “How could it have been still sitting there, or only moving that far over 44 years?” He offers that question to his students, but, he said, “nobody ever comes up with an answer.”
That story involves Garret and Sandy Rosslow, who met while students at Sequoia High School, according to a Santa Cruz Sentinel article. Garret gave Sandy a class ring in 1958, but shortly after, it fell off Sandy’s finger at Main Beach. It took 44 years before Lee Wiese, a “metal-detector enthusiast,” found it in 2002. Wiese contacted the high school, whose alumni association sent out an email asking if anyone had lost a 1958 class ring with the initials G.S.R. Garret knew it was his. Wiese had it polished and returned to the couple, who reportedly had it resting “on exhibit” on their kitchen counter.
Griggs said he was reminded of the story again when he read a Lookout report about Soquel High School 1997 graduate Jeremy Kennedy, who lost his ring while surfing at Capitola Beach in 1997, just months after he bought it. Nearly 28 years later, this past December, local nurse Lisa Crouch pulled Kennedy’s ring from the shores of Platforms beach in Rio Del Mar— about 3 miles south of where it was lost. Thanks to mutual contacts on Facebook, Crouch was able to reunite Kennedy with his long-lost class ring.
The story and its mystery delighted Griggs, as did the striking similarities with the Rosslows’ story from 2002.
Griggs said these stories are fascinating to him because of the mystery of where the ring could have possibly been for 28 years, or 44 years. He is especially surprised that the rings could have stayed so close to where they were lost because of how waves and currents transport masses of sand along the coastline, a movement called littoral drift.
He estimates that over that 28 years, about 7 million cubic yards of sand has been carried down the shoreline from Capitola to Moss Landing. From Moss Landing, the sand moves farther down to the deep sea floor, where it’s unlikely to ever come back to the shore.
In Grigg’s UCSC course, which he’s been teaching for about 40 years, he describes that movement of sand transport in more detail to his students and asks them how they think the Rosslows’ class ring could have stayed in the same place considering how much the sand moves.
While it remains a puzzling question to Griggs that the rings were retrieved after so many years, he said the story of Kennedy’s ring could contribute to some new understanding of how sand transport varies along the Santa Cruz County coastline.
The Rosslows’ ring sat in one place for 44 years at Main Beach while Kennedy’s moved a few miles over 28 years from Capitola to Platforms. Griggs said that could mean the Main Beach sand is “more stable” and has less movement, but he said it’s still unclear how this could have happened.
“It reminds us that we don’t have all the answers,” he said. “We haven’t figured everything out.”
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