When Heather Athanasiou lost her Warwick Academy alumni ring while swimming in Elbow Beach in the summer of 1983 she never expected to see it again.

In fact she did not even tell her mother that she had lost it for fear of recriminations.

But now, 32 years after the ring slipped off her finger, it has been returned to her mother Mary Sumpter and will soon be back in her possession thanks to a remarkable sequence of events.

Mrs Athanasiou was 18 and had just graduated from school when she lost the piece of jewellery as she swam with friends close to Coral Beach. Nearly ten years later the ring was found close to the same spot on the beach by a man scouring the shallows with a metal detector.

He recorded the find, which was one of two Warwick Academy alumni rings and a Warwick Secondary ring he has recovered over the years, put the rings in a bag and then mislaid them for several years.

Last weekend he found the bag of rings and, with the help of his wife, took to Facebook to track down the owners of the rings.

It took just a few hours before Ms Sumpter had been contacted and she relayed the news to her astounded daughter in London.

“I never thought I would see that ring again,” said Mrs Athanasiou, whose maiden name Heather Smith was engraved on this inside of the ring.

“Three things have struck me about this; firstly the power of Facebook as it was only a matter of hours before someone contacted my mum in Bermuda to tell her about the ring. Secondly, that someone had actually found the ring and that it had not been washed away in the ten years it had been in the sea through hurricanes and storms.

“And, thirdly, that the person who found it wanted to make sure it made its way back to its owner, even if it was 22 years after he had found it.

“You often hear about these kind of stories, but you never think that you will be the subject of it. I am thrilled to be getting this ring back.”

The 72-year-old man who found the ring three inches under the sand on March 14, 1993 asked to remain anonymous. But he told The Royal Gazette he had always intended to return the rings to their rightful owners.

“In those days I was doing a lot of metal detecting in the sea off Bermuda,” he said. “It was a delightful way to pass the time.

“Ninety-nine per cent of the time you ended up digging up ring pulls and pieces of rubbish. But there were also times when you found jewellery or helped recover and return valuables that tourists had lost on holiday.

“As for these rings, I can only apologise I did not get them back to their owners sooner.

“My excuse for the passing of all those years between finding and returning is surviving life: I had a business to run, small as it was, children to herd toward their destiny and a defective memory.

“The time flew by in the greatest of haste and, while 22 years seems an obscene amount of time, to those of an older persuasion, it was only yesterday. I am delighted to have found them again and this time did not let them go wandering off on their own. It’s an incredible feeling to give something back after such a long period of time and see how much joy that brings.”

Since Mrs Athanasiou’s ring was returned to her mother this week, Warwick Academy has been able to trace the owner of the second ring, Terryann Berkeley, and hopes to reunite her with the ring she lost over three decades ago in Shelly Bay today.

They are still searching for the third Warwick Secondary ring’s owner: Theresa L Brangman.