A man’s misfortunate on vacation turned into a story fit for a fantasy novel, as complete strangers came to his rescue inspired by The Lord of the Rings.
Losing his wedding ring in a mountain stream, 3 young men summoned a determination worthy of Tolkien’s masterpiece to not only find the man’s ‘precious’ golden ring, but go ‘there and back again’ to return it.
Hobbit puns satisfied for the moment, the story begins with Patrick Mohr, visiting Italy with his children and wife of 16 years. While playing in the fast-flowing water, one of his kids grabbed Mohr’s hand in such a way as to slide the 18-karat wedding band right off and away downstream.
Mohr stood paralyzed, realizing that it was gone forever, and with it the memories and sentiment accumulated through its 16-year stay on his finger. Explaining the disaster to his wife, the couple quickly diverged on the next step. Mohr admittedly felt like moping, while his wife hurried downstream to ask the only other people around for help.
Rather than Tolkien’s 4 hobbits or 13 dwarves, she found i tre ragazzi: Filippo Palagi, Nicola Malloggi, and Edoardo Poggi. Hearing what had happened, the three young friends were pessimistic at best, and they didn’t have any swimming goggles to lend for the search.
When it was all over, Mohr would tell CBC News’ As it Happened that “sometimes you have to let go of control.”
“Sometimes you have to put things out into the universe and ask for help,” he said. “And sometimes, you get an answer.”
That day, he and his wife got an answer.
From where it came, few could say, but Poggi, Malloggi, and Palagi summoned from within themselves a remarkable spirit of empathy and fellowship: promising Mohr and his family that, like Frodo Baggins and his friends (characters from The Lord of the Rings) they would find the ring and bring it all the way to Ireland in a summertime quest fit for novel.
The friends/hobbits began their search with kayaks and had no luck for 2 days. How many, even Good Samaritans, would have thrown in the towel by then? Yet they persevered: roping themselves to boulders on the third day and searching with snorkeling gear at a particularly fast flowing portion.
It was Malloggi who, seeing a glint of light among the river sand, felt the welling up of an unreal excitement in his stomach. Seizing the sand and returning to the surface—just like in the films—he found that a golden ring was sitting on his palm.
Mohr, meanwhile, had continued his vacation, and was eating dinner with his family in Tuscany when he received a text message from an unfamiliar Italian number. Opening it he saw the caption to a photo of a golden ring.
“Hi Sméagol, look what we found.”
“I put the phone back in my pocket and kept stirring the pasta pot in shock,” Mohr told As it Happened. “My wife looked at my expression on my face and asked me what happened.”
When he showed his family the news, “chaos ensued.” Yet things would get stranger.
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Rather than rush to return the ring in Italy, the 3 young Italian heroes offered to deliver it personally to Ireland so Mohr could continue to enjoy the rest of his vacation. And that’s exactly what happened.
Rather than needing around 18 months as Frodo did, Palagi, Malloggi, and Poggi required just a short Ryanair flight to cross the continent and arrive at Mohr’s door—where they were given a heroes welcome, entering dressed as hobbits, and singing songs from The Lords of the Rings film.
Words must have failed at the sight.
The heroes were rewarded with a tour to Glendalough, the Wicklow Mountains’ 1,000-year-old abbey and lake, as well as the nearby Glenmalure Valley, some of finest natural scenery the east of Ireland has to offer.
After a round of Guinness in the local pub, they returned home for a traditional Irish dinner, and promises of eternal friendship.
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Palagi admitted the whole saga had amazed him, but as Bilbo would say, “you step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you’ll be swept off to.”
As Mohr would say, “sometimes you have to put things out into the universe and ask for help.”
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