Billy Ray Harris never imagined one good deed could change his life.
When a woman accidentally dropped her diamond engagement ring into a homeless man’s cup while giving him spare change, the homeless man returned it to her the next time he saw her.
She lost her ring
When Sarah Darling, a yoga instructor from Kansas City, Missouri, saw a homeless man with a cup out for spare change, she decided to give him all of the coins she had in her coin purse. She emptied the coin purse into the man’s cup, not remembering that she had earlier taken off her beloved engagement ring because it was giving her finger a rash and had put it into the purse.
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It wasn’t until the next day that Sarah realized she couldn’t find her ring.
She tried to think of where it could be, and remembered that she had given some change from her purse to a homeless man. She decided to try and find the homeless man to see if she had dropped the ring in his cup by accident.
She went to the area she had seen him, but he was gone. She came back the following day and found him sitting again on the ground.
“I asked him … ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I think I gave you something that’s very precious to me,” Sarah said.
“Was it a ring? Yeah, I have it, I kept it for you,” the homeless man replied.
He took out the diamond ring and gave it to her.
Floored by the honesty of this man, Sarah was so deeply appreciative and grateful. The homeless man, Billy Ray Harris, had seen the ring in his cup three days ago and was also surprised to find it. He wasn’t sure if it was real, if someone had given it to him, or if it was a mistake, so he brought it to a local jeweler to see if it was worth anything.
The jeweler said it was a real diamond ring and offered to buy it from him for $4,000 on the spot. While that was a large amount of money to Billy, he thought that since it was real that it must be very important to somebody, so rather than taking the cash he decided to hold onto it to see if somebody would come searching for it.
Her fiance Bill Krejci set up a donation page to help reward Harris for his honesty and donations soon began flooding in from around the world.
The former beggar has already put a deposit on a house he plans to renovate himself and has also set up a trust to manage his money. He has also invested in a Volkswagen Beetle.
Harris has become a minor celebrity having appeared on the Today show with the couple to tell his story.
Now, he has a home, a job, and on Sunday, he reunited with his family after 16 years. Harris has kept in contact with the couple who helped him out.
Source:metro.co.uk,
