Petaluma goldsmith thanks good Samaritan who returned lost $23,000 Taylor Swift-inspired diamond ring

When Petaluma goldsmith Jordan Mantzke realized he’d lost a diamond-encrusted engagement ring worth $23,000 ‒ unknowingly dropping it as he exited his vehicle near the Keller Street parking garage in downtown Petaluma ‒ he feared that the ring, the largest he’d ever made , was gone for good.

“My desperation grew as the hours passed,” he recalled, “and I began thinking about how I was going to recover from the financial loss.”

Fortunately, thanks to a virtuous good Samaritan named Ken, who spied the ring on the sidewalk ‒ still in the jewelry box Mantzke had been transporting it in ‒ the worst was avoided. Now, a relieved Mantzke just wants Ken to know how grateful he is.

With a 10-carat, emerald-cut, lab-grown diamond valued at $20,000, the ring was designed, constructed and assembled as part of a YouTube video challenge Mantzke set for himself.

“It started with a simple idea,” he says on the video that eventually appeared online. “’What kind of engagement ring would I make for Taylor Swift?’”

Under the branded label of “Modern Goldsmith,” Mantze has created dozens of entertaining videos describing his work. Some of them have been viewed more than a million times. The Taylor Swift challenge was just for fun, of course, and to demonstrate how the creation of a gold-and-diamond ring was carried out.

“I actually recorded the entire process of me making the ring,” Mantzke said. “That is part of the reason why losing the ring hurts so bad. The monetary aspect obviously, but I had also spent many days crafting and filming the project, only to lose it at the very end.”

How, exactly, did he come to lose such a valuable object?

“My mom had flown into town from Washington State that same morning,” Mantzke explained. “I picked her up from the airport and had brought the ring along so I could show her my work. After admiring the ring, she turned her focus to grandkids and I decided to go into work for a few hours.” He drove downtown, parked, got out of the van and walked to the studio. “I didn’t notice that the ring was gone for many hours after, as I thought it was in my work for the entire time.”

In retrospect, he now guesses that he somehow had the ring in his lap when he climbed out of the van.

“My family and I searched for hours at my home and at my shop and retraced our steps around town,” he said. They visited any and every spot he might have dropped the ring: the Alphabet Soup thrift stores, Petaluma Market, even El Roy’s Taco Truck.

Mantzke said that it was out of character for him to transport a ring the way he did, which is why he “tore his house and shop apart” looking for it.

“It just didn’t seem plausible that I would have actually lost it in such a careless way,” he said. “I had invested my own money to make this ring. It wasn’t a client’s ring, therefore I felt OK with taking it home with me.”

Unable to find the lost treasure, as a last ditch effort, Mantzke made posts on Next Door and Craigslist.

“That night I got a few replies, but just from well-wishers hoping that I would find the ring,” he said. Mantzke returned to the downtown scene of the event, continuing to retrace his steps, hoping against hope that he’d missed something the first time or two. “I then checked my email and got the best message I could have possibly asked for. ‘FOUND! Your Lost Ring In Petaluma.’”

The message stated that a man named Ken had found the ring and had enlisted the help of his sister to find the person it belonged to. It was she who left the message with Ken’s phone number.

“A nice and cautiously sounding gentleman answered the phone,” Mantzke recalled. “He proceeded to ask me questions about the ring, just so I could verify with him that I indeed was the owner. I was able to tell him about a heart diamond accent on the side of the band. He asked me if the ring was in any kind of container. When I told him it was in half of a green velvet ring box, he said, ‘Now I know this is your ring!’”

They exchanged took place at the Safeway parking lot on the east side of Petaluma.

“He had his family with him, and were all on their way to a 49ers Super Bowl party,” Mantzke said. “They were the sweetest family and we embraced arms through the car window. I thanked them profusely for their kindness and kept reiterating how grateful I was that they found the ring. It was very short notice, but I was able to scrounge a little money together and told them to use it for their Super Bowl party. I told them, ‘I owe you way more than this.’ They kindly responded that ‘I didn’t owe them anything’ and they ‘believe in paying it forward.’

Mantzke never got a last name for the man who found and returned the ring. He only knows him as Ken.

“I will never forget Ken and his honesty,” he said. “I feel incredibly happy that good honest people really do still exist in this world, despite what we are sometimes led to believe.”

A bit later, Mantzke replied to Ken’s sister’s original email.

“I told her how thankful I was that she contacted me,” he said. “She replied, ‘I am soooo happy and grateful that my brother Ken found it for you! He is truly one of the kindest, most honest and good-hearted humans I know.’”

So, if Taylor Swift does ever need a strikingly beautiful engagement ring, Mantzke, thanks to Ken, has one she might want to look at. It already comes with an awesome back-story.