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Wedding ring stolen from Saskatoon hospital room

Mar 3, 2015 | 6:44 AM

A symbol of a love that has spanned decades for Saskatchewan couple Larry and Gail Beaucage is missing.

The Beaucage family is now on a heartbreaking search for a wedding ring, stolen from a room at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon.

Larry is in the hospital with terminal cancer and his family says these are his last few days.

“He won’t be going home from the hospital. (The cancer) has advanced quite rapidly over the last week and a half especially,” Darcey Beaucage, the couple’s son, said.

Larry has been in the hospital since last week, many days with his wife by his side. Because of medication and treatment, he was asked to take off his ring because his hands might swell. His wife put the precious band in her purse.

Then she set the purse on a window ledge in her husband’s hospital room while she helped him get dressed in the room’s washroom.

“She went back in, got him dressed, got him together, got him clean, came back out two to three minutes later, the purse was gone,” Darcey said.

The ring is a white gold band with nine diamonds in a centre cluster. Gail gave it to Larry for their 50th wedding anniversary. They would celebrate 60 years of marriage this May.

“My dad was originally married with a simple gold band and then for their 20th wedding anniversary, my mother bought him a proper wedding ring, but this was a 50th anniversary, gold anniversary, so she bought him a very special ring.”

Darcey said his dad thought he lost the ring a few years ago and tore apart the couple’s home looking for it until he found it. The family has not told Larry his beloved ring is missing.

“It was incredibly important to my dad and it’s one of the few things that we are going to have of him left afterwards,” Darcey said.

The familyfiled a police report, but Darcey said there’s an easy way to get the ring back to them: returning it to the lost and found at St. Paul’s Hospital.

“Drop it off, walk away. You can say you found it on the floor, you can tell them whatever story you want.”

Darcey hopes he can reunite the ring with his parents before his dad’s passing.

“It would mean the world to my entire family. My mom is especially upset, but the rest of us are as well,” he said.

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