Lost a ring? Game wardens might have it

A Kansas game warden is trying to find the owner of an “expensive-looking ring,” found at Olpe City Lake, about 10 miles south of Emporia.

Aaron Scheve, game warden for the Lyon County area, posted that description Sunday night on the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism game wardens Facebook page.

Scheve hopes the owner will call him at 620-431-9873, and describe the ring in detail.

Scheve said his wife found the ring in a few inches of water about a week ago, while they were on a family kayak trip to the lake. The ring was near a boat ramp. He estimates the ring had been in the water for a week or two, at most, when it was found.

He theorizes it could have been lost by someone participating in a recent national-level disc golf tournament at the lake. It’s possible it slipped from the person’s finger on a throw but wasn’t noticed until much later. The tournament had attracted competitors from all across the nation.

When notifying the lake managers got no response after several days, Scheve decided to use social media to help spread the word.

“Morally, or by any standard, it wouldn’t be right for us to keep something that’s not ours,” Scheve said of his family keeping the ring. “It has to belong to somebody, and it’s probably pretty important to them.”

Dan Melson, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism regional law enforcement captain for northeast Kansas, said the ring is just one of many things Kansas game wardens find annually.

As well as poachers, unsafe boaters and trespassers, through the years game wardens have found stranded motorists and people in medical distress far from the nearest paved road.

“We are about the only law enforcement that begins where the pavement ends,” Melson said.

Game wardens have located lost hunting dogs and family pets and recovered stolen goods, including stolen cars in some pretty remote or unique places.

“In April we pulled a car out of Osage State Lake. It had been stolen in the early 1990s and had been in the lake that long,” Melson said.

Game wardens have been using high-tech underwater sonar units for the past several years.

A few years ago, right off a popular boat ramp at Lake Shawnee, a popular lake near Topeka, game wardens located a submerged car that had been missing for more than 20 years. Inside, they also found a body.

“We were able to close a missing person’s case,” Melson said of the find that gave a family closure after wondering why someone left home and never returned decades before.

Kansas game wardens have another specialized law enforcement tool that have come to the rescue, too, – six highly-trained canine units.

The dogs have helped locate escaped criminals and, at least once, probably saved a life.

Melson said two officers and a canine were called to a rest area along I-70, in Geary County in April. A woman had reported her 7-year-old autistic grandson was missing.

“The canine tracked the child to a huge, long culvert that went under the interstate. They then took the dog across to where the culvert came out, and it picked up the track again,” said Melson. “That explained why nobody saw the boy cross the highway. Everybody else was looking on the wrong side.”

Following the dog on the track that led along a creek, the game wardens found the autistic boy standing in a pool of water. Melson said one of the game wardens rushed up, crashed into the water and carried the boy to safety.

Wrapped in a game warden’s shirt for warmth, the boy was delivered to his worried grandmother a half-mile away, on the opposite side of the busy interstate.

“That’s the kind of feel-good story we really like,” Melson said. “That’s a feeling for us that’s pretty tough to match.”

This story was originally published July 3, 2017 at 2:10 PM with the headline "Lost a ring? Game wardens might have it."