SUNFIELD - “I have a surprise,” Vee Grimwood told Michelle O’Toole when she reached her over the phone.

“It’s for you and your dad.”

Both women grew up in Sunfield, a small Eaton County village of fewer than 600 residents, but it took Grimwood three decades to make this connection.

She had searched for a way to make it happen since 1984, ever since a tiny piece of metal caught her eye from its place in the earth.

Friday, Grimwood, 61, pulled a small red box from her pocket and handed it to Michelle O'Toole. Her father, Mike O'Toole, now 70, leaned in to get a closer look as all three sat in the front of the Historical Society of Sunfield Welch Museum.

A delicate, ornate 1929 Sunfield High School class ring was nestled inside. Eighty-nine years ago it belonged to Gretchen Mapes, Mike O'Toole's mother. She died in 1965.

The O'Toole's had never seen the ring. It was likely lost years before Gretchen's death. Now it's back where it belongs.

Mike O'Toole brought his hand to his mouth and swallowed.

"That's so beautiful," Michelle O'Toole, 36, said as she reached inside and pulled out the ring.

She never met her grandmother, and for her, the ring is an irreplaceable find, a tangible reminder of family, she said.

Even if it took 34 years to bring it home.

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Grimwood could credit the afternoon sun with her discovery all those years ago.

The delicate piece of jewelry was half buried in the gravel, only the back side of the band exposed, just outside what was once Sunfield High School.

It was 1984, and Grimwood was waiting for her daughter Heather's dance class inside the two-story building to end. 

The metal band on the ornate ring glinted in the afternoon sunlight from its position in the ground, wedged in the earth on the side of the building, just a few feet from a curved steel pipe Grimwood used to play on when she was little.

She bent down and came up with the ring in her hand. The setting was inscribed.

“SHS,” it read in gold lettering, and the sides were inscribed with the class ring’s year, 1929.

Grimwood took it home and removed the dirt that had worked its way into the crevices of the ring’s detailed gold setting and band.

Once it was clean, she noticed the initials carved into the inside of the band, clearly sized for its owner’s tiny ring finger.

“G.L.M," it read.

“I didn’t know how to go about finding the owner," Grimwood said, but she intended to try. “Somebody lost this. Somebody needs to have it."

Grimwood placed the class ring in her own jewelry box.

One of these days, she told herself, I’ll find the owner.

She still hadn’t succeeded more than 30 years later when, last December, Grimwood visited the Sunfield Historical Society Welch Museum and stumbled upon the answer.

On a back wall of the former hardware store was a black-and-white spread showcasing portraits of the students who graduated from Sunfield High School from 1928 to 1963. Museum volunteers had placed them there only a few years earlier.

She enlisted the help of Historical Society Vice President Wendel Peabody to get a closer look at every name under every portrait on the wall.

“We got the flashlights out and started looking,” Grimwood said.

That’s when they found her, Gretchen L. Mapes. Then 18 years old, her photo captured Mapes sporting dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair and an upturned smile.

Grimwood went back to the museum twice that day, looking again just to be sure.

“I wanted to be positive,” she said. “I didn’t want to give it to somebody that it didn’t belong to. I wanted the rightful owner.”

No one else featured in the class of 1929 had the initials G.L.M.

“We found her,” Grimwood said.

From there, connecting with the Mapes family was just a short walk away.

Mapes Furniture sits just down the street from the museum on Main Street. The century-old family-run business was founded by Gretchen Mapes’ parents in 1892.

Co-owner Becky Mapes connected Grimwood with one of Gretchen Mapes’ three sons with a phone call.

Mike O’Toole said his mother suffered from arthritis and was in poor health for several years before her death in 1965. He was 16 then. Talking about her is still difficult.

Friday, while in Sunfield to reclaim the lost heirloom, Mike O’Toole choked back tears when asked about her.

He lives in Hastings, along with Michelle O’Toole, who isn’t surprised mentioning her brought out emotion in her father.

“It’s a hard topic for him,” she said. “When she was ill, he took care of her.”

Shortly after Gretchen Mapes' death, Mike O’Toole went into the Army and served during the Vietnam War.

Mike O’Toole was surprised when family reached out to him with news of Gretchen’s class ring. He didn’t even know she had one, he said, and she never mentioned misplacing it. He jumped at the chance to get it back.

“I’d love to have it,” he told them.

On Friday, Grimwood embraced both father and daughter. They looked at photos of Gretchen Mapes that Mike O'Toole brought with him.

“I felt very blessed that I could give it to the rightful owner,” Grimwood said.

Michelle O’Toole said family often told her she looked just like her grandmother.

"You have the same smile, the same wavy hair," relatives would tell her as she grew up.

Because she’s the only living daughter in the Mapes family, the ring belongs to her now.

“Probably I’ll wear it,” Michelle O'Toole said. “Someday I’ll give it to my daughter.”

It's like having her grandmother with her, she said, from here on out. It's something that was missing, even if they didn't know it was gone, Michelle O'Toole said.

“We don’t have anything that was hers. It’s a piece of her. It means she’s still there."

Contact reporter Rachel Greco at (517) 528-2075 or rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.