On her last day of treatment for breast cancer, in September, Bridget Evans received a gift from her friends — a mother of pearl ring.

Evans never took it off. To her, the ring symbolized a hopeful end to her struggle with cancer. But two weeks ago, the ring vanished. “I just didn’t know where my ring went,” said Evans, a 48-year-old mother of two. “And I didn’t want to tell anybody.”

She told her husband and teenage children that they had to find the ring. “They know, this is like the only thing. I cannot lose this ring,” Evans said.

On Monday the ring was back on Evans’ finger, thanks to a man who belongs to a group of local surfing buddies who comb the Deschutes River looking for lost items. Evans believes the ring slipped off her hand during one of her daily plunges in the river at the Bend Whitewater Park.

After it was found, the ring was traced back to Evans by staff at a local jewelry store, and eventually returned within a matter of hours.

“It’s too much,” Evans said. “I’m so filled with gratitude. I am about to explode with gratitude. I have never felt like this. It is just too unbelievable.”

Evans, a former schoolteacher who is now an instructor at Groove Yoga in Bend, said the tale of the ring underscores the power of community, and its recovery proves miracles are real — especially, she said, because the ring was found on the day a cancer scan came back with good news.

Evans said plunging into the river helped her body cope with the side effects of chemotherapy, lowering her body temperature and soothing her joint pain. Because of this physical connection with the river, Evans formed a powerful bond with the Deschutes, a bond that is only stronger now that her ring is back.

“She gives so freely, that river. And she never asks for anything in return,” Evans said.

The man who found Evans’ ring, Lled Smith, 53, of Bend, is a member of Loot the Deschutes, which is dedicated to finding lost items in the river. On Tuesday, Smith and Evans met for the first time at Mother’s Juice Cafe on Bend’s west side.

The chance of finding the ring on Monday started after a couple had lost a wedding ring in the river and reached out to Smith for help recovering it. The couple arrived at the river early Monday morning, but things didn’t go as planned, Smith said.

“We didn’t find it. And I’m like, ‘I’ll just keep searching.’ So, I searched for a little bit more.”

And then the river gave it back.

“I look down and I see something shiny,” Smith said. “It was in a crack in knee deep water right where the water goes over one of the falls. So, I had to make sure I didn’t lose it because it would wash away real fast. I got it and I stuck it on my finger and I showed it to my friend.”

While the ring he found that day wasn’t the ring he was looking for, it set off a chain of events.

Smith said he posted a photo of the ring on his group’s Instagram page and somebody commented that the ring might have come from Silverado Jewelry Gallery in downtown Bend. Smith took the ring to Silverado, and the store’s general manager, Shayna Kendrick, was able to identify it as a piece made by Seattle-based Jamie Joseph.

“Jamie Joseph is our No. 1 best selling artist in the store,” Kendrick said. “We sell like 500 of those rings a year. And they are all one of a kind. So, to find the person with that exact ring sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t. But it also was not a guarantee that it was bought through our store.”

The final piece to the puzzle fell into place when Kendrick slipped on the ring and realized it was a size 7½. When she searched in her records for “mother of pearl Jamie Joseph,” several rings popped up in the system, but there was only one size 7½, Kendrick said.

The store’s records showed the ring was purchased under the name Ozolin, which is the last name of Evans’ good friend Casie Ozolin. She purchased the ring at Silverado, along with a group of several other women, for Evans nine months prior.

Kendrick called Ozolin, who picked it up and decided to put the ring in a Silverado branded jewelry box and take it to Evans at her home. When she got there, Ozolin was also wearing a similar ring and proceeded to fist bump her friend.

“I didn’t want her to know it was lost, because I lose things all the time and they always come up. Always,” Evans said. “She kind of went to fist bump me, because she had on a ring, and she goes, ‘Where’s your ring?’”

At that point, Evans fessed up about losing the ring, and said she believed she might have left it at her mother’s house after helping her move some furniture.

Then Ozolin handed Evans the Silverado jewelry box.

“I opened it and it was my ring,” Evans said. “I was so happy to get it back. My mind was just ping ponging all over…I just covered my mouth. Tears of happiness. I was just in a fit of gratitude and disbelief.”