She left her new engagement ring in a rest stop bathroom. Then, a stranger saw her Facebook post.
When Bailey Davis lost her engagement ring just two weeks after her proposal, she felt so bad that she called out of work.
But in a little over 24 hours, a traumatic experience turned into an opportunity to feel grateful after a complete stranger returned it to her.
Dec. 4, was like any other Monday for Davis, who works for a car auction. She was on her way to Columbus, Ohio for work and had stopped along the way.
"I passed by the rest area. So, I stopped. I left there probably at 12:30 p.m.. I got all the way up in the Columbus area and I was on the interstate and I was just thinking about what I was going do this evening ... and then I just realized it's not on my hand and I pulled over immediately," Davis told USA TODAY.
"I knew exactly where I left it," she said.
Panicked, she begins to look up the address for the rest stop to make her way back. Her grandparents lived close by the rest stop so she called them and they got there before her to scope out the ring.
It wasn't there.
"I just went back home. I didn't even work that day. I just went back home. I went to bed," she said.
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Davis said that realizing she might lose her ring forever made her "sick." Despite having insurance on it and knowing that "it was likely all going to be okay," she was sad that any other ring wouldn't be the one that her fiancé proposed with.
"It really hit that if I didn't get it back, it was going of lose all the sentimental value of it, which was really rough," she said.
Davis eventually came to terms that the ring had been lost. Then, an hour later, she got the call that it was actually found.
"It all feels like it was meant to happen and I don't regret that it happened. But, it was really rough," said.
In an effort to track down the ring, Davis made posters and eventually posted about it on her Facebook, which, a few shares later, reached Coty Warren.
'I thought it was fake'
Warren had gone into the same rest stop as Davis. The men's bathroom was being cleaned, so Warren entered the single family bathroom. He was washing his hands when he saw a ring on the counter.
"I go around trying to look to see if I can find somebody to give the ring back to and I couldn't find anybody that was working at the facility. So, I just went ahead and walked out to my work truck and I left with it," Warren said.
He left the ring on his dashboard, and went to work. Warren said he thought the ring was fake.
"It didn't even look real. It looked like it was like costume jewelry at first because it was so big and extravagant. I'm like surely to God, somebody wouldn't leave their ring just laying right up there on the shelf," he said.
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When he made it back home, he said he put the ring on his liquor cabinet and carried on about his day. He figured that living in a small town, he's bound to come across who owns it.
The next day, that's exactly what happened when he came across the post Davis put on Facebook.
"I called her up and I said well: 'I guess tonight's your lucky night.' She was very ecstatic," he said.
Davis said she was happy to get Warren's call on Tuesday night. She had gotten a few fake calls throughout the day, but when Warren told her details about the ring and where he found it (which she didn't advertise), she felt optimistic.
"I was thinking, if he makes me wait till tomorrow, I was gonna die but he said: 'let me go to my house and get it and I'll meet you at Holzer hospital.' So he picked a public place with people there," Davis said.
When the two met, Davis offered Warren the $1,000 reward she put on the flyers for the ring, but he refused, telling her that a good deed was good enough for him.
"I feel what goes around comes around and you do good deeds upon others, it'll come back to you tenfold," he said.
Davis said she walked away from the experience more grateful. She was grateful for the support of her community, and those who helped her find the ring, her fiancé who was understanding, and the kindness of a stranger to return her ring.
"And then not to mention I prayed and I prayed. And I 100% believe that that was a big impact too," she said. "My faith grew even closer to God."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Stranger returns engagement ring Ohio woman lost at a rest stop
