Engagement ring was a dead cert to be found

HAPPY ENDING Simone Dooley and Brendan Vahey are pictured at Ballinrobe Races last Monday, before Simone lost her engagement ring. Happily she managed to find it after racing, thanks to help from volunteers. Pic: Brendan Vahey

Áine Ryan

TRADITION says that engagement rings are worn on the fourth finger of the left hand because it was once believed that a vein in that finger led directly to the heart. So you can just imagine how heartbroken Simone Dooley was when she noticed that her platinum band had disappeared off that dainty digit while driving home from the Ballinrobe Races with fiancé, Brendan Vahey. No need to bet on whether it could have led to a pre-emptive divorce for the couple, bot primary school teachers, who plan to marry in Portugal next summer. Well, after some sweating, kneeling in grass and praying to St Anthony – this saga has a fairytale ending.   
But first some head-scratching and the odd expletive!
“Brendan was working at the races last Monday night and I went along and put on a few little bets and enjoyed the atmosphere and sunshine. At around 8pm I went out to the car to change my shoes. I must have taken the ring off and put it in my lap and totally forgot about it. I was wearing a white dress and it must have fallen onto the grass as I got back out of the car,” Simone told The Mayo News last night.
Oblivious, she went back in to enjoy the last two races, returned to the car with Brendan about an hour later and were driving at the Cornmarket in Ballinrobe when she noticed that the ring was missing.
“Of course, we couldn’t quite figure out where the car had been parked on our return but, as we had arrived early, I remembered it was somewhere between two trees near the buildings. As we started searching people who were coming out started to ask ‘if everything was okay’. The group helping us got bigger and bigger. There were young and old people, men and women, in all sorts of outfits and heels,” she said.
One man decided to coordinate the operation – which soon looked like a team of forensic detectives looking for evidence at the scene of a crime – with the column of ring-searchers down moving across the designated area in strict formation. It was a young boy on holidays from the US who came across the missing ring.