An 18-carat gold wedding ring slipped into a fast-moving Italian river and vanished — nine days later, its owner got a text reading "Hi Sméagol, look what we found."

  • 2 days spent searching the river before the ring turned up
  • 1,000+ miles the three friends traveled to deliver it in person
  • 16 years Patrick Mohr had been married when he lost the ring
  • 3 strangers who became, in his words, "family in Ireland"

Irishman Patrick Mohr was vacationing in Italy this summer, catching his kids as they jumped off a riverside boulder, when one of them grabbed his hand and his ring slid off into the current. "I just stood there a little bit paralyzed with instant knowledge it's gone," he later told CBC Radio's As It Happens.

Two days, one kayak, and a lot of scuba masks

The only other people at the river that day were three Italian friends — Filippo Palagi, Nicola Malloggi and Edoardo Poggi. Mohr's wife approached them to ask if they had swimming goggles to help search.

They didn't have goggles, but they had time. Half-joking, the trio decided they'd find the ring and return it in a Lord of the Rings–style quest — "an epic journey," Palagi said, that would supposedly take "more than a thousand years."

They started from a kayak, then switched tactics: anchoring themselves to boulders with rope and diving with scuba masks into a stretch of especially strong rapids. After two days with nothing to show for it, Malloggi spotted a glint on the riverbed and grabbed it. Against the odds the three friends gave themselves, it was the ring.

A text message, and then a flight to Ireland

Nine days after the ring disappeared, Mohr — by then back home cooking dinner — got a photo text from an unfamiliar Italian number with the message "Hi Sméagol, look what we found."

"It's such an improbable story," Mohr said. "The guys most certainly didn't have to look for us, and when they found it, they wanted to get in touch with me to tell me."

Instead of mailing it back, the three friends proposed finishing the quest properly: flying over 1,000 miles to Ireland to hand-deliver the ring in person, in character as hobbits. Mohr agreed immediately and welcomed all three into his home.

They arrived dressed as Frodo, Merry and Sam, playing Lord of the Rings music as they handed the ring back. Mohr took them to Glendalough, a thousand-year-old monastic site and lake in County Wicklow, for a pint of Guinness at his local pub, and finally a traditional Irish family dinner.

From a chance encounter to a standing friendship

What began as three strangers lending a hand at a riverbank has turned into an ongoing friendship between two countries. "Before that, we never knew each other," Palagi said, "[but] now, we have a family in Ireland."

For Mohr, the experience reshaped how he thinks about asking for help from people he's never met. "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."

The full story first aired on CBC Radio's As It Happens, with additional reporting from AOL News.