'Hi Sméagol, Look What We Found': Italian Hobbits Fly to Ireland to Return Man's Wedding Ring Lost in River

DUBLIN — An Irish father who lost his wedding ring in a fast-moving river in Tuscany got it back months later from three Italian strangers. They spent days diving to find it, then flew about 1,000 miles to Ireland dressed as hobbits from "The Lord of the Rings" to return it by hand.

Patrick Mohr, from Dun Laoghaire on the coast south of Dublin, was on a summer holiday in Italy with his wife, Joanne McHugh, and their three daughters when the 18-carat gold band slipped off his finger in early July.

The family was swimming in a clear mountain stream near Bagni di Lucca, a spa town in the hills north of Lucca. Mohr was catching his children as they jumped from a boulder into the water. One of them grabbed his hand, and the ring was pulled off and swept away by the current.

"I just stood there a little bit paralysed with instant knowledge it's gone," Mohr told CBC Radio's "As It Happens." "I didn't see much hope in it."

The couple had been married for 16 years, and Mohr said the loss was about far more than the gold.

"It's not about the gold ring, it's about the sentimental value of what it means," he said.

While Mohr stood in the water, McHugh hurried downstream to the only other people nearby: three young Italian men, Filippo Palagi, Nicola Malloggi and Edoardo Poggi. She asked to borrow their swimming goggles, then asked if they would help search. The two sides exchanged phone numbers in case the ring turned up.

To cheer up the dejected holidaymaker, the friends joked that they would go on a quest for the ring, like the hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic.

They took the joke seriously. The three men first searched from kayaks, without success for two days. They then changed tactics and searched underwater. They tied themselves to boulders with ropes to keep from being swept away and dove with masks into the strongest part of the current.

Eventually, Malloggi saw a glint on the riverbed. He reached down and pulled up Mohr's wedding band.

Nine days after losing it, Mohr was still on holiday in Tuscany and making dinner for his family when his phone lit up with a message from an unfamiliar Italian number. It contained a photo of the ring, held above the rocky streambed, and a short message: "Hi Sméagol, look what we found."

The nickname referred to Sméagol, the Tolkien character who becomes obsessed with the One Ring. In the story, the ring is first found at the bottom of a river.

Rather than meet up in Italy or send the ring by post, the friends offered to deliver it to Ireland in person so Mohr could enjoy the rest of his holiday. They also gave him a role in the story. The three Italians would play Frodo, Merry and Sam, and Mohr would be the wizard Gandalf.

When the day came, the men arrived at Mohr's home in Dun Laoghaire dressed as hobbits, with music from the "Lord of the Rings" films playing, and handed back the ring. Mohr is wearing it again.

The meeting quickly became a visit. The Italians stayed for about a week and followed an itinerary Mohr put together. He took them to Glendalough, the medieval monastic site in the Wicklow Mountains, and to the nearby Glenmalure Valley. The group also went for a pint of Guinness at Mohr's local pub and sat down with his family for a traditional Irish meal.

Mohr thanked his guests with a gift of his own. He gave each man a silver bracelet engraved with both his real name and his hobbit name.

Palagi said the chance meeting at a Tuscan river had turned into something lasting.

"Before that, we never knew each other, [but] now, we have a family in Ireland," he said.

The story spread widely after CBC's interview with Mohr and Palagi in October. It was shared by the Good News Movement on Instagram and picked up by other outlets, with many readers praising the friends for turning a stranger's bad luck into an adventure.

Lost wedding rings returned against the odds have become a popular kind of feel-good story online. This one stood out because of the effort involved. Recovering a small gold band from a fast mountain stream meant hours of diving in cold, strong water, and the men chose to travel to another country rather than drop the ring in the mail.

It also borrowed directly from one of the best-known stories about a ring. In Tolkien's books, published in the 1950s and adapted into Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning film trilogy in the early 2000s, a small group of hobbits travels across Middle-earth carrying a powerful ring. The real-life version had a happier and simpler goal: getting a ring home to the man who lost it.

The two families have stayed in touch since the visit. Mohr's ring is back on his finger, and what began as a request to borrow goggles has turned into a friendship between families in Tuscany and Ireland.