Real Moments in Real Estate: The Ring
Memorial Day 2025 started with the anticipation of taking repeat clients to see a home in White Post. Currently, they live in the 55+ community Heritage Hunt in Gainesville. As transplants to Virginia from Colorado, they have found that they do enjoy their Heritage Hunt home, but find they are spending a lot more time enjoying the Shenandoah area. Today’s home tour was to visit one home in a community we have never seen, Cedar Meadows. Their son and daughter-in-law were to join us.
Upon arriving to pick them up for the ride out, I was asked if all four adults could ride in my car. No problem at all. The more the merrier is my philosophy. My clients had also offered for us all to go to lunch after the showing. Fun!
Dad sat next to me in the front of my SUV and the rest of the crew were in the back seat. There were two distinct conversations going on and as I was engaging in the front seat conversation with dad, I was getting hints in our conversational lulls that there may be an issue with mom, son and daughter-in-law. When I asked if all was okay in the back seat, I was told that the son had accidentally flicked his wedding ring and now they couldn’t find it. He had been fiddling around with it since it fits loosely. Naturally, three adults packed onto one bench seat left little room for moving to and fro, no less searching for a misplaced gold ring, so the conversation was one of worry with logic interjected that it couldn’t be that far. We were in an enclosed car.
Upon arriving at the property it was all hands on deck. The neighbor across the street from the listing must have been puzzled with five adults diving head first into every door of my Hyundai Sante Fe with our butts up in the air. Surprisingly, the search was not immediately successful. How many places could a gold wedding band possibly be? I made sure all the front seats were pulled forward and in the simple action of walking around the car, I was thrown off balance and wobbled when my wedge heel sandals came apart between the sole and the heel. There would be no more walking in them. Great! I was in bare feet from that moment on. Funny how that problem on any other day would have defined my day, but not this one. Where was that wedding ring?!!
I searched through the beach bag I used as an organizer for items in my trunk and the trunk organzier itself. Very unlikely places for the ring to be, but you never know. We also searched the front seats and floor boards. Nothing. Of course the search in the back seat was the most intense. Cell phone flashlights beamed and fingers swept everywhere they could.
It was hard to stay focused on the reason for our trip, which was to tour a home. As my buyers and I peeled ourselves away from the search after ten to fifteen minutes, the son and daughter-in-law were combing through all the most likely places the ring could be again. The home, sadly, was unimpressive to my buyers and felt like a wasted trip for them. It was too small and the patio was on the side of the home with no view other than the neighbor’s siding. Now they felt like they had pulled me out on a weekend for nothing. Not to worry. Not every home works and sometimes you have to see them to know.
Maybe their son and daughter-in-law had found the ring while we were inside the property was the positive thought I verbalized as we made it for the front door to head out. Nope. Searching for this ring was like being on a hampster wheel. On and on we twirled, unable to stop looking in all all the places we had before. We even looked on the ground around the car. Nothing. What did turn up was three lost pens and a tube of hand cream that I had searched for high and low. It was time to force ourselves to stop. Thirty minutes searching had been fruitless.
Spirits among my passengers were deflated to say the least, so we decided to skip lunch and head back toward Gainesville. The son felt terrible and kept apologizing. I wasn’t having any of that. I let him know that once I got my husband, James, on the case, that ring was going to be found. (The man has a borescope and specialty tools to disconnect plastic trim in cars. There is nothing he can’t do.) This ring got lost in the right car.
After dropping everyone off, I headed home, dialing my husband immediately. James was on the way out of our house nearly as soon as I parked my SUV in our driveway. He took apart my flat bed storage area to look under the rear seats. He had a flashlight combing everywhere for about twenty minutes. He even got his borescope. He saw every spec of crud imaginable, but no ring. Another thirty minutes of fruitless effort. Then, just as a last ditch he reached down into the upholstery around the seat belt receptacle latch where the son had been sitting. A mild twist of his fingers and he effortlessly pulled out the ring. Whew! How had we all overlooked that? My husband was amazed we didn’t find it ourselves and almost didn’t look there himself. Boy am I glad he did.
Thankfully, this real moment in real estate has a happy ending. There is never a dull moment in this job. Taking care of the people is my passion, even when it is an off the beaten path task like finding a lost wedding ring. My hope is that this experience doesn’t linger as a bad feeling about the Active Adult homes available in Frederick County, VA for my buyers.
Chris Ann Cleland
Associate Broker
VA License #0225089470
Long & Foster Real Estate
Call or Text: 703-402-0037
Email: ChrisAnn@LNF.com
www.UncompromisingValues.com
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Chris Ann Cleland, not Long & Foster. All content is written by Chris Ann Cleland without the aid of artificial intelligence.