FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A busy Fort Lauderdale restaurant, shut down for eat-in business because of the coronavirus, was still doing a good take out and delivery business, but its popular outdoor deck didn’t have the foot traffic and the crowds at tables overlooking the intracoastal.
What better time to replace the splintered wood on the deck? Coconuts manager Ryan Krivoy said when the boards were tossed out and his staff and management team went to clean up the debris that had amassed after three years of stuff falling through the cracks, it became a treasure hunt. The biggest treasure? A silver wedding ring with the inscription “Mike & Lisa 08-21-15," lost in 2017 and now reunited with its owner after a Facebook post went viral.
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At first, Krivoy said they thought it was the lost ring of one of their regular customers until they washed the sand and dirt off of it and found the name. It wasn’t a match. “When we realized it wasn’t his ring, we all agreed maybe we could find the owner. We didn’t know if they lost it three weeks ago or two years ago.”
Finding Mike and Lisa wasn’t easy. The restaurant’s marketing director, Sasha Formica, searched Google and the wedding site The Knot to see if she could find anyone with those names that was married on August 21, 2015.
No luck. So they took a photo of the ring and posted it on Facebook on Monday.
“That’s when things really took off,” said Krivoy. By the time the rightful owner’s wife called the restaurant from New York on Thursday to claim the ring, the post had been shared, Krivoy believes, about 4,000 times.
**Wedding band update** A few days ago we shared a photo of an engraved wedding band that we found under our deck....
Posted by Coconuts on Thursday, April 16, 2020
To make sure Mike and Lisa were the rightful owners, she texted a picture of the two of them eating at the restaurant.
“It was a funny interaction when she called,” said Krivoy. “I picked up the phone and I thought it was someone placing an order, and she said: ‘This might sound odd, but you know the ring and Mike and Lisa? Well, I’m Lisa.' Then Sasha took it from there, got some photos from her to make sure it was their ring.” Krivoy said she told him that a friend from the Phillippines saw the post and told Lisa to go check the page. “She told me our server was really helpful that night, but we couldn’t get to it. We took their telephone number.” Lisa told him that was the last time they thought of it and they went and got Mike a new ring."
The ring was sent back to the couple on Friday, said Krivoy.
Curious what else was under the deck? According to Krivoy there were plenty of old menus, lots of expired drivers’ licenses and expired credit cards, lots of change, including a gold quarter eagle coin they later discovered was from 1855, and, in one section, three $100 bills.
Krivoy said the money collected will go to the staff.
So with all of this notoriety from Facebook, has business picked up at Coconuts? “Maybe we saw an uptick in the sales of our popular Scoobies, but they are always a hit,” said Krivoy.
The crab claws sauteed in garlic butter were at fault for Mike’s ring slipping between the floorboards.
In her thank you text to Coconuts, Lisa said: “We lost it in March 20, 2017 while having dinner at Coconuts to celebrate my birthday. Your “Scooby Snacks” are so delicious, yet deadly because as Mike as licking his fingers and wiping his hand clean, he dropped his ring below the deck.”