When the Vancouver Police Department holds its annual auction in March, there will be one item that Mike Delaney is glad will not be up for sale: his prized university ring that he lost in 2007.
How Delaney, a 1994 graduate of St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., got his ring back after all these years is a story Police Chief Adam Palmer chose to tell at a recent police board meeting.
“This is a ring, if stolen, cannot be replaced,” the chief said as he began the story in a boardroom at the Cambie Street precinct.
Palmer had good reason for telling the story at the meeting instead of at a news conference. But he didn’t disclose it to the audience until he got to the end of his tale.
As the story goes, three years went by before Delaney’s ring surfaced in a bag of jewelry recovered by the VPD’s organized crime section as part of a drug investigation. The bag sat in the VPD’s property office for five years while the case worked its way through the courts.
The case has concluded and the bag of jewelry was set to go to auction March 12 as unclaimed property. But then Ian Wightman, a retired VPD sergeant who is now manager of the department’s property and forensic evidence storage unit, had a look in the bag.
“He saw a ring in there with a very unique X on it, which is from this university in Nova Scotia,” said the chief, noting Wightman believed he could track down the owner.
He phoned St. Francis Xavier University and got the names of the jewelry stores which make the rings. That led him to Cameron’s Jewellry. Based on the unique engraving on the inside of the ring, which included the initials M.E.D., B.A. and the graduation year, Wightman was able to identify the owner: Michael Edward Delaney, who graduated in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Wightman contacted the university, who got in touch with Delaney, who was in Nova Scotia visiting family at the time. Delaney called Wightman to confirm the good news.
“Funnily enough,” the chief continued, “when they talked to the owner of the ring in [Nova Scotia], he said my cousin is in Vancouver and she’s actually on the Vancouver police board.”
At that point, Palmer turned to his right, where police board member Claire Marshall was seated.
“So Claire,” he said, holding a small black box which contained the ring, “I‘m happy to return your cousin’s ring.”
The room erupted in applause.
“He’ll be thrilled,” said Marshall as she accepted the ring.
Delaney, a former RCMP officer who now works as a lawyer, told the Courier via email from Nova Scotia the ring was of great importance to him. He declined to go into details how he lost the ring. Instead, he recalled how proud his relatives were to wear the ring and how it was a way of bringing graduates of the school together.
“After a long nine years, I feel connected again,” he wrote. “I can proudly wear my X-ring at our family gatherings and I can’t wait to bump into an X-grad on the streets of Vancouver.”
Added Delaney: “I would be remiss if I did not mention how impressed I am with the property manager and the Vancouver Police Department. With all the negative police stories the media seems to focus on these days, this truly was above and beyond the call of duty, and for that, I am eternally grateful.”
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