NEVIS, Minn. — Harper Johansen never even knew her uncle’s wedding ring was missing.

In 2016, while playing with his son in the water at the family’s Lake Belle Taine cabin near Nevis, Stephen Meyer’s wedding ring accidentally came off and sank to the bottom. Years went by, and Meyer would attempt to find it during their summer visits with no luck.

“I looked a lot — I go swimming every night,” said cabin owner Malana Johansen, Meyer’s mother-in-law. “We’ve spent a lot of time looking for that ring. We were dredging the sand. My neighbor gave me a big magnet. We could not find it.”

On July 20, 9-year-old Harper went down to the shore shortly after arriving at her grandparents’ cabin for the first time since she was a toddler. Moments later — and for no real reason, her grandmother Malana said — she looked down in the shallow water and saw a shimmer.

“She just picked it up and said, ‘There’s a ring!’ ” Malana said. “The lake has gone down probably about 30 feet since last fall. … It was still in the water, but she didn’t really have to go in the lake to reach it. It was just there.”

Harper’s discovery was met with a “speechless” reaction from her family. This ring had been searched for in vain for a decade, only to be found by Meyer’s niece just before dark without her knowing the situation. It was a shock to everyone.

“It was in great shape, too,” Malana said. “It just needed a little cleaning, but it looks gorgeous.”

The ring still fits Meyer’s finger as well, according to Malana. Though he purchased a new ring after losing this one, he has now been seen around the family cabin wearing both rings.

Harper lives with her parents in Sierra Madre, California. Their home was one of thousands lost during the wildfires in southern California in early 2025.

“She has gone through quite a lot in the last year,” Malana said. “To have this exciting thing happen — I think it’s just wonderful.”

The ring’s resurgence was made much easier by the drought conditions causing the Lake Belle Taine shore to recede. Malana questioned if fate — and Mother Nature — was on their side for this.

“Maybe now it will start raining again, now that we finally found the ring,” she said.

Since finding the ring, Harper has been asked to help find things by neighbors, friends and the jeweler who cleaned the ring. Her grandmother thinks she could turn this into a lucrative side job one day.

“She wants to be a teacher, and she is going to be a fabulous teacher,” Malana said, “but I told her ‘then in the summertime you should just offer to find things for people.’”

Even if her finding things ends with the ring, Malana said her granddaughter’s discovery will long be remembered at the Johansen cabin.

“This is going to be family lore from now on.”