Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
FARMINGTON — For the last few years, the Utah Treasure Hunt has lured people onto Utah's trails in hopes they would be the ones to find a hidden cash prize. Lindsey Olsen is one of them.
She went to look for the buried treasure, $25,000 hidden in a chest on the Farmington Canyon trail, but said she lost her own treasure on the hike.
"I had my 3-year-old little boy with me that day," Olsen said. About a mile and a half in on a hot July day, she had to rethink their plans. "He's heavy; it was hot. My fingers started swelling," Olsen said.
Olsen said she was worried she'd have to cut off her wedding bands if she kept them on.
"I couldn't see what I was doing, but I put them in my mouth, I opened the necklace, and I went to slide my rings onto my necklace," she recalled.
They went down the mountain. It wasn't until bath time that night that she realized her rings had not gone home with them.
"I realized that I only had one part of my ring on the necklace, and so I knew immediately I had to have lost it on the trail," Olsen said. "I thought I would never see it again."
Devastated, she immediately posted videos and pictures of her ring on multiple social media pages.
"People were sharing it and bumping the post, and commenting on it, 'We hope you find it!'" Olsen said.
As the notifications came in, she was shocked strangers were invested in her story. Olsen said people went to the trail with their own metal detectors, and some spent hours at a time searching. She and her family also returned to the trail to search on several occasions but never spotted the ring.
When Olsen started to feel hopeless two weeks later, she was tagged in a new post.
"A sweet lady had posted a note on the trailhead post, 'Found a woman's ring. Please call, do not text, describe the ring to me,'" Olsen said.
Later that night, Olsen was on the finder's doorstep.
"She's like, 'I'm a little embarrassed. I've been wearing it because I didn't think anybody, anybody would call about it.'"
The finder almost overlooked it, thinking it was a pull tab from a can.
Olsen told her, "Don't be embarrassed, I'm so glad that you loved it for me while I was gone."
Though Olsen didn't find the buried treasure, she said she rediscovered her faith in humanity.
"It made me realize, no, people really are good and people really do care even if they don't know who I am," she said.
Olsen said she offered the woman who found her ring a money reward, but she refused to take anything. Instead, Olsen said she's going to do everything she can to pay it forward through good deeds.
