Lake Hartwell Diving team discovers missing wedding ring for 25 years

A team of divers from Lake Hartwell helped a happy couple by finding a wedding ring they had lost for 25 years. The rescue and the relationship were rocky roads with a happy ending.

It’s a love that has come full circle.

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“I think we had something that other couples didn't necessarily have,” David Allen said.

David and Lisa Allen were college sweethearts who got married years ago. But when David fell into alcoholism, everything changed.

“What really made the difference for me was that she filed for divorce, and it was like someone had pulled the rug out from under my life, you know, from my wife and of my three children,” David said.

He began his journey to sobriety while the divorce was finalized, losing weight in the process. While sitting on his brother's dock in 1998, his ring came loose.

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“It bounced off the dock and fell into the water,” he recalled.

Twenty-five years later, the two lovebirds met again over a song.

“And we just start dancing,” Lisa said. “And I just saw a different person in that moment.”

The couple was back together, but Lisa's ring lacked a partner. That’s when the Lake Hartwell Divers got involved. They help reunite owners and their belongings that have been missing for years.

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This time they searched for four days.

“Every day you dig up a bolt, or you dig up a sunroof or something like that,” said Jeremy Robinson, owner of Lake Hartwell Divers. “But once you start finding tops from the '70s and you're looking for something from the '90s, you know it's possible,” he said.

The divers banded together to find the lost wedding ring. Finally, on Friday, Robinson arrived, ring finger first.

“It means so much to him and his family,” he said. “So it meant a lot to us to help him get it back.”

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The happy couple was reunited, their engagement coming full circle.

“I consider it a baptism,” David said. “The ring goes in one way and then it’s washed and it’s clean and it comes out and it’s something different.”

Both men say the 25-year journey was worth it.