RTW Fall

Newlywed Laura Whyte was overjoyed to be flying to Regina last week — a chance to be reunited with her husband Matthew, who has been away studying at the RCMP training college for the past six months.

Whyte, 25, packed her bags at her Ottawa-area home, but put her fancy engagement ring and wedding band in a small green jewellery box for her carry-on.

“I don’t like to put it in my checked bag because I’ve lost my luggage before,” she said.

The rings in a white gold setting are raised, so she doesn’t usually wear them — because as an educational assistant, she doesn’t want to poke children when changing diapers. Instead, she has two other rings that are flat that she wears regularly.

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But on special occasions, she brings out the rings, and wanted to wear them at Matthew’s swearing-in ceremony and banquet on Monday.

Problem was, when she arrived in Regina on Wednesday night, after changing from her Boeing 737 plane in Winnipeg, the box was missing.

She immediately dispatched emails to both airports, but figures the box fell out of her carry-on bag on the second leg of the trip, when her small WestJet Encore turboprop plane hit turbulence.

“I keep the box in the bottom of the bag, but because I took things out, it must have fallen out,” Whyte said.

Meanwhile, Melissa Shaw, a WestJet baggage agent based at Vancouver’s airport, was cleaning out the lost and found bin on Friday, and came across the rings that were found on the Boeing 737 flight from Calgary on Wednesday night.

“I looked and thought, oh man, we need to get on this,” Shaw said in an email, knowing they were important. She tried calling the jeweller on the box, but there was no record of the rings.

Shaw wanted to post a photo on her personal Facebook page and WestJet groups in hopes of finding the rightful owner, but a colleague suggested sending it to WestJet’s social media team and a photo was posted to Twitter.

It was quickly retweeted or liked more than 2,000 times.

But the problem was Whyte doesn’t use Twitter, nor do any of her friends, so she didn’t know the rings had been found.

Whyte didn’t immediately hear anything back from the airports, so on Friday she was preparing to tell Matthew, 32, that she had lost the rings.

“I was getting ready to go out to dinner to celebrate the completion of his course, and I was thinking, ‘How do I tell him?’” Whyte said.

“Right as I was about to tell him, the phone rings, and I said, ‘Hang on, I better answer this. I’ll tell you after,’” she said. “And it was Melissa saying, ‘I think we have your ring.’

“He knew something was bothering me and he couldn’t put his finger on it,” Whyte said. “I nearly broke down in tears. I was so happy.”

Shaw said that airport staff in Regina sent Whyte’s email to WestJet’s baggage team in Calgary, which had seen the item on the file, and called Vancouver.

Shaw dispatched the rings via FedEx overnight to a Regina hotel, so Whyte had them by Saturday, well in time for the big ceremony.

On the way home to Ottawa this week, Whyte put the rings in her checked bag, based on her husband’s advice. She says she doesn’t wear all of her rings, because it’s just too much.

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In May, the couple, who will celebrate their first anniversary in July, will be moving to High Prairie, Alta., as Matthew starts his new RCMP career.

How will Whyte get the rings there?

“I think I’ll just trust it to the movers.”