MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — Five decades after it went missing, a south Alabama woman has found a Tennessee surgeon’s ring while exploring a neighborhood with her metal detector.

Al.com reports that Barbara Burgess found Dr. Stephen R. Sheppard’s University of Tennessee Class of 1970 ring in front of a home in a subdivision behind the University of South Alabama in Mobile.

The ring was about four inches deep in the dirt.

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She contacted the University of Tennessee’s Office of Alumni Affairs. Officials learned Sheppard had previously contacted the office about his missing ring.

Sheppard lost the ring about 50 years ago, when he was attending medical school and living at the house where the ring was found.

Burgess and Sheppard met shortly after the ring was found and it was returned to him.