Man Thought Grandparents’ Wedding Rings Were Destroyed in Fire, 3 Weeks Later Phone Rings
Losing one’s belongings in a fire is certainly devastating. But beyond those pricey electronics or other replaceable items, losing your memories is all the more heartbreaking.
Old photos and family heirlooms are priceless and irreplaceable. When one Harrisonburg, Virginia, man’s apartment caught on fire, he only cared about a few special things inside.
Patrick Vigna and his roommates watched as the fire destroyed their home in March. “The moment I knew that most of my stuff was gone was you could see through the front window and all the way back to the woods,” Vigna told WHSV.
“I thought about what I was losing…” he went on. “The first thought I had was my grandparents’ wedding rings.”
Vigna shared the significance of those rings with the news outlet, explaining that it’s been a decade since his grandparents passed away.
“My dad gave them to me when I moved to college,” Vigna said. “And he handed them to me, and he said ‘I trust you, and I want them to be with you while you’re in college.'”
Imagine his devastation when he realized those rings might never be seen again. When the apartment complex invited residents to write down items they might want the restoration company to look for, Vigna knew exactly what he wanted returned.
Not only did Vigna write a letter asking them to look for the rings, but he also hoped they might find a shell casing from his grandfather’s 21-gun salute, a rosary that belonged to his grandma and Vigna’s pair of baseball caps.
When weeks passed and Vigna hadn’t heard anything, he started to lose hope. “I went three weeks, and I just thought everything was gone,” he shared.
“I didn’t think anything was going to be there anymore,” he continued. “I came to grips with it. The day that it happened, I called my dad, and I apologized for losing the rings.”
But a miracle was just around the corner for this man. Because of Vigna’s letter, an apartment complex employee and the maintenance crew went above and beyond to search for what was lost — and called him when three rings were found.
“I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t speak,” he said on hearing the good news. “I looked at [the employee] and said, ‘I’ll never, ever be able to say thank you enough for what this means to me and what these rings mean to me.'”
But the rings weren’t the only keepsakes salvaged. The shell casing was recovered too, along with a photo of Vigna and his dad.
“It was the most miraculous feeling,” he said. We think so, too. A GoFundMe campaign says a lot about the kind of man Mr. Vigna is.
The organizer of the fundraiser, Julie Champan, called Vigna ” a service-minded, kind-hearted individual.” The campaign has met and passed their goal of $5,000.
Liftable, a section of The Western Journal, reached out to Patrick Vigna for further comment, but did not receive a response.
In a separate article, WHSV reported the fire caused no injury to the tenants of the apartment complex. The cause of the fire was later determined to be “improper disposal of smoking material.”
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