Dick Reisinger was just trying to hide his wife's best jewelry in a place where burglars wouldn't think to look.
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| Dick and Katie Reisinger still smiling after giving away precious jewelry |
He chose a puzzle box on a bedroom shelf.
Katie Reisinger was just trying to help out a church rummage sale by donating some household items.
Among the things she bagged up was the very same puzzle box.
She had no idea she was giving away her wedding ring and other precious jewelry.
"Needless to say, I have been a basket case," she said.
"It's a disaster, Jim, to say the least," Dick told me. "Sometimes you write articles about what some dumb people do."
The Reisingers aren't dumb. They got tangled up in a comedy of errors that they don't find funny at all. They're hoping someone got the jigsaw puzzle home from the rummage sale, found the jewelry inside and will return it to them.
Their story starts in mid-August as they prepared for a weeklong trip to California for a granddaughter's wedding. Worried about the possibility of a burglary at their Brown Deer home while gone, Katie asked Dick to think of a good hiding place for the jewelry. She handed him a small leather container holding the wedding ring, two other diamond rings, a silver ring with a turquoise stone, a gold bracelet and a pair of earrings.
"I thought no one would ever go and look in a puzzle box," Dick said.
He had no idea how right he was about that.
A couple days after they returned home from the West Coast, a neighbor came over to remind them of the upcoming rummage sale on Aug. 27 and 28 at Brown Deer United Methodist Church, 5736 W. Brown Deer Road, to benefit the church's day-care center.
Katie pulled together a stack of books, some glassware and four puzzle boxes.
I should mention that Dick and Katie have been married nearly 60 years. They raised three sons. They have communicated as a couple a million times about things great and small. But not this time. Dick forgot to mention that he had put the jewelry in the box with 1,000 puzzle pieces. And Katie did not tell him what she was donating to the rummage sale.
I don't get the sense that they blame each other for what happened here. It wouldn't help anyway. They're in this together. The promise we make is for better or worse.
"We have never, ever lost anything like that. We normally sit down and discuss things," said Dick, a retired construction company superintendent.
A week went by after the rummage sale. Katie was sorting things on her dresser. She went outside to ask Dick where he had hidden her jewelry.
"He said in the puzzle boxes in the spare bedroom. As I'm walking in the house, I'm thinking, Oh no!" Katie said.
What she said was more like, "Oh my God in heaven," is the way Dick remembers it.
They contacted the rummage sale organizers to see if anyone knew who purchased the puzzles. The church tacked up a notice and mentioned the loss during a couple services. The Reisingers contacted Brown Deer police just in case anyone had found the jewelry, valued at about $6,000. The diamond rings are insured. The couple is unsure about the design of the lost puzzle.
Dick said he won't be swayed from hiding valuables for future trips, but he'll let Katie know the exact spot. And for Katie, the lesson here is to take a close look at anything you're giving away.
"We've been keeping our fingers crossed," she said, "and feeling just terrible."
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