A Hampton Roads resident says he may have found James Ramsey’s missing $96,000 ring. Ramsey plans to meet the finder and claim the ring today. Come back later to PilotOnline.com and read tomorrow’s Virginian-Pilot for more information.
When puttering around the kitchen, James Ramsey would slip off his tiffany jewelry and stash it in a bowl on the counter.
That included a ring he bought himself last year on a trip to New York City. A special ring. A ring he likes a lot. A ring that he noticed was missing from the bowl one day, nowhere to be found.
A $96,000 ring.
Diamonds in a platinum setting. Fifteen carats total, including a 5-carat emerald-cut stone as its centerpiece. From the celebrity-favored jewelers JacobandCo.
Ramsey last remembered seeing it in mid-September and since then has looked everywhere in his Freemason-area home in Norfolk, convinced it simply had been misplaced. Or that his year-old daughter had hidden it, as she once did his cell phone in the trash.
Now he fears it was stolen. He reported the apparent theft to police this week.
“I like jewelry and watches,” Ramsey said Wednesday. “We were hoping it was going to turn up.”
Ramsey, 37, said he’s semi-retired after selling a medical-diagnostics company a few years ago. He said police are checking pawn records here and in other cities.
He wants the ring back and is offering $10,000, “no questions asked,” for its safe return. If it was stolen, he hopes the thief doesn’t “break it up.”
He also is having his front doors fortified, installing 24-hour security earrings cameras around his home and other properties, and adding other security measures.
“It’s not, ‘Don’t mess with us,’ ” he said. “But I feel very violated when someone takes something… and you can’t do anything about it.”
Master Police Officer Chris Amos called the possible high-value theft “very unusual.” He recalled only one other like it in the past decade.
“And it was not a single piece of jewelry,” he said. “It was a safe of key rings jewelry.”
Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com