They’re engaged in trying to find missing ring at Crossroads
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Randy Shemwell spent Friday night on his hands and knees. Not proposing. The Redmond man did that in June. Shemwell and his fiancée, Val Dillon, were searching the Crossroads Shopping Center parking lot, looking for Dillon’s engagement ring. Dillon believes it slipped off her finger when she was headed to Barnes & Noble. A driver stopped to let her cross in front of his car and she waved a thank-you. “It is irreplaceable,” Shemwell said. “It’s an antique ring, platinum with a filigree setting under the diamond. My fiancée loved the ring because it was old, an estate sale. She is so upset — she’s gone several days without sleeping.” Dillon, who lives in Hoquiam, had made one other stop Friday afternoon, visiting her grandmother in an Olympia nursing home. She knows she had the ring when she arrived there because she showed it to her grandmother. But just in case, the couple revisited the nursing home and its parking lot over the weekend. They’ve also stripped the interior of Dillon’s car. The loss cost Shemwell dinner, too. “I was coming home from Denver Friday evening, and we were going to have a nice dinner,” he said. “Instead we spent Friday night crawling around the parking lot. We finally ate dinner at 1 a.m. in a 24-hour restaurant.” Shemwell finds the probable spot the ring was lost a tad ironic. He and his fiancée purchased the ring from Sunderland’s Manufacturing Jewelers, a half-block from Barnes & Noble at Crossroads. Although he continues to look in the parking lot, he’s also alerted the shopping center, book store and placed ads in Seattle and Olympia newspapers. “I’m offering a reward,” he said. “I’d be happy to buy it again if someone found it.” He can be reached at 425-883-9441. Retiring ways: A couple of promotions hammered home the point to Mark Rothgeb of Snoqualmie. He had to give up being a volunteer firefighter because his day job was interfering. A construction carpenter, he has received several promotions in recent years and spends more and more time at work. “I was thinking of my fellow crew mates when I decided to quit,” Rothgeb said. “It’s not fair to them to think I might not show up for calls.” He’s been a volunteer with the Snoqualmie Fire Department for 11 years. Like most volunteer firefighters, Rothgeb invested more than six months in evening and weekend training classes. A pager alerted him to all fire calls in Snoqualmie and he would respond when he was in the area. He fought fires, helped with community education, and worked everything from auto accidents to heart attacks. He was expected to be at the fire station one night a week and most Saturdays. His love of the service began when he was 4 years old. “When I was a kid, every time we went to visit my uncle in Indiana I got to go on fire calls. My uncle was a fire chief,” Rothgeb said. “I even got to slide down the brass pole in the firehouse.” He grew up in Arizona and hoped to become a firefighter. He tested and interviewed several times but never made the final cut. While waiting, he became a carpenter. The training, particularly the EMT part, worked in his favor on the job. He heads the first-aid committee and is the first one fellow workers look for when there are accidents. “We usually have the typical construction accidents — some guy putting a nail through his hand with a nail gun,” Rothgeb said. His last official run was to the scene of a motorcycle accident. Turned out the injured driver was a friend of Rothgeb’s middle son. Then, two days after he hung up his badge, he passed by an accident scene and stopped to help. That victim was his youngest son’s girlfriend. “I miss going out on calls,” he said. “It has been fun, and it is hard to give up. But it is time to concentrate on my career.” Sign of the times: Sammamish has been a city since 1999, but it finally made the big time — highway signs. State Department of Transportation workers recently installed signs at the Highlands exit off Interstate 90 pointing drivers toward Sammamish. More : seattletimes.nwsource.com |