By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
TWO teenagers have been praised by Narre Warren police after returning a lost engagement ring worth $12,000 to its rightful owner.
Alanna Finne-Larsan, 18, discovered the ring in the Fountain Gate Shopping Centre car park in early September, after leaving the Goodlife gym.
Within a week reward posters had popped up at the gym, calling for anyone who had seen the engagement ring to come forward, and Alanna thought the photo pictured looked awfully familiar.
“I finished at the gym at Fountain Gate and I was walking back to my car and I saw something shining in the car park,” Alanna said.
“I picked it up and it looked expensive so I took it home and told my mum.
“The next week I went to the gym and saw a reward sign. I was with my boyfriend at the time, and we called and planned to meet up with the owner night.”
The engagement ring belonged to Geraldine Lobitana, from Narre Warren, whose partner Sid proposed to her a mere month before she lost the ring.
“I must have misplaced it at the gym but I hadn’t realised until a few hours later,” Geraldine said.
“It was about 10pm and I was rushing to go back to the gym to go and find it and it wasn’t there and I thought it was lost, it was pretty devastating.
“We went to the police station and put in a lost report.
“I was devastated, only because I thought to myself that it was never going to come back. I was never going to get that back. I was a sobbing, heaving mess. It was pretty terrible.”
But thanks to the goodwill of Alanna and her boyfriend, Brandon, Geraldine has now been reunited with her $12,000 engagement ring.
“I’m incredibly grateful, eternally grateful. I said if you’re not going to take the reward money, I want you to have something,” Geraldine said.
“If you need anything in the future you can contact me.
“I’m glad there are still good people out there.”
Alanna and Brandon wouldn’t even take the Lobitanas’ proffered $1000 reward.
Alanna said she couldn’t allow herself to take money from a couple who were preparing for a wedding.
“I looked at the reward sign and saw the $1000, and thought about what I could do with that, but when I gave the ring to them, I realised I could never take that money from them,” she said.
