It was lying on its side in the grass between the sidewalk and the street near Two Keys Tavern on South Limestone.
When
Robert “Shorty” Eads found the ring in August he knew the owner would
want it back. The 2011 Georgetown College football Final Four ring was
more than just jewelry — someone had worked hard for that ring.
“I
know it meant something to somebody,” Eads said recently. “If it was
the last thing that I did, I was going to get that ring back to its
owner.”
So Eads spent the next three months
trying to find its owner. He called Georgetown College’s athletics
department. No one called him back. He got on the internet and searched
Facebook.
Nothing.
Eads, a former electrician
who has been homeless for eight years, had his backpack — where he
keeps everything he owns — stolen four different times over the next
three months. He lost everything. But not the ring.
“I always kept it on me,” Eads explained.
Eads has worked on the city’s End Panhandling Now jobs van almost since the program began in May 2017.
The program puts would-be panhandlers to work picking up trash and
litter and pays them. Frustrated that no one would call him back, Eads
asked Jarrod Jones, the supervisor of the jobs van, for help in
November.
Jones,
a retired Lexington police officer, posted photos of the ring on
Facebook. Other retired police officers saw Jones’ post and got on the
case. The ring itself had clues. On one side was “Schmitz” and the
number 15.
Don Schmitz was at home in Union in Northern Kentucky when his phone rang a week or so before Thanksgiving.
“I almost didn’t pick it up,” Schmitz said. It’s usually a telemarketer.
But he did. On the other line was a police officer. Was Mr. Schmitz related to a Georgetown College football player?
“I said, ‘Wait, did you find the ring?” Schmitz said.
SNIP
Don Schmitz drove to Lexington one Sunday before Thanksgiving
and met Jones and got his son’s ring back. He gave Jones $100 to give
to Eads. Schmitz said he would have given him more, but he is
temporarily out of work right now because he needs a shoulder replaced.
“I would have liked to have met him,” Don Schmitz said of Eads. “I can’t thank him enough. It was a Christmas gift to all of us. There are still good people out there.”
Eads could have pawned the ring.
“If
anybody needed the money, it’s him,” Don Schmitz said. “Instead, he
kept it and the diligence and the homework it took to get it back to
us... He really made our Christmas.”
Tyler
Hurst, executive director of the New Life Day Center, the homeless day
shelter that oversees the jobs van program, said people often equate
morality with wealth. Eads doesn’t have a home. But he never lost his
moral compass, he said.
“Robert is a great guy,” Hurst said. “People sometimes only see who that person is today. They don’t know about that person’s past. And they don’t see who they can be.”
The
van gives people like Eads a chance to have a job. So many give up and
think they can’t get work or no one wants to hire them, Hurst said.
“This gives people purpose,” Hurst said.
The program has also cut the number of panhandlers on Lexington streets, according to recent counts. In May 2017, there were between 150 to 160 panhandlers on Lexington streets within a 12 hour period. In November 2018, there were 21, 11 of whom were picked up and given a job on the van.
Eads has been a longtime employee on the van. Hurst said they are working to get him off the street.
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