"Buried" class ring finds its way back to owner-years later

I never thought I'd see that ring again," says Mitko Dintcheff, who lost his class ring more than ten years ago when he was an undergraduate student in business and accounting, living in the dorms at UB. "It fell out of a window of my dorm room in 1984 and I never knew what happened to it."

After graduation, Dintcheff left UB, went to work, then returned to the university in 1992 to embark on a new career in the field of engineering.

Dintcheff had forgotten about the ring until he received a phone call last spring from a University Facilities employee, Morse Burfield. Burfield told him he'd found Dintcheff's long-lost ring while crews were working around Governors, pruning the ivy in preparation for brick pointing. The ring was embedded in the ivy.

Even after ten years, the ring was in good shape, Burfield said. "My daughter cleaned it up, and that's when we saw the name inside," he said.

"I was so surprised," says Dintcheff. "He told me he'd found me through the phone book. I met him on campus and he handed the ring over to me. I thanked him and we shook hands," Dintcheff said.

Getting his ring back was a stroke of good luck but the signal event took place this May, when Dintcheff received his electrical engineering degree.