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Thunder Bay man’s lost ring shows up 6 months later — 2,000 km away

Debra Young, right, gave Paul Marshall, left, a ring for his 40th birthday. He was devastated when he lost it at work.

Paul Marshall lost his ring on the job.

The 41-year-old Thunder Bay man lost his "treasured ring," given to him by his then-girlfriend (now fiancée) Debra Young on his 40th birthday, six months ago while working at a machine at GRK Fasteners, a specialty-screw manufacturer.

While Young tried to reassure him that the titanium ring only cost a few hundred dollars, Marshall was still disappointed.

"I don't care [if] you spent $5. It means a lot," he said.

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The next day, he searched through the boxes of screws he had packaged, but the ring was nowhere to be found.

"I had written it off," Marshall told ABC News. "I spent a few hours the next day going through hundreds of packages of screws, everything I had worked on the day before."

Six months later, however, two construction workers south of the border spotted the ring in their box of screws.

The ring had travelled more than 2,000 kilometres to the construction site in York, Maine.

"The two guys were working in an attic, and the one guy saw the ring in the package. So did the other guy," Marshall recalled.

The workers, Ian Renaud and Randy Newell, and their boss, George Gendron, were determined to track down the ring's original owner.

Gendron returned to the lumberyard where he had purchased the screws, and contacted an independent manufacturer's representative who was able to determine which plant made the screws. That rep then contacted Marshall's manager in Thunder Bay — and the ring is now in the mail, on its way back to him.

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"About a week-and-a-half ago our manager came into the machine room and asked the guys that normally work on the other machine if they lost a ring," Marshall said. "They said, 'No, but we know Paul did.'"

"That's a lot of people that have got to be honest and truthful along the way, and I'm just amazed that people went to that much trouble to find me," Marshall told CBC News.

According to ABC News, in a few days, Marshall plans to surprise Young, who doesn't know the ring has been found, by walking into their home with his ring back on his finger.

Marshall and Young plan to wed next summer. Marshall likely won't use the returned ring as a wedding band.

"I've lost a fair amount of weight in the last little bit, which is probably why I lost it in the first place," Marshall said. "It's a titanium ring so I won't be able to size it so I don’t know what I'll do with it."