AUBURN — The tears started as soon as she saw the sparkling pink ring.

“Oh my God, thank you,” said Michelle Bilodeau, wiping her eyes.

The Edward Little High School Class of ’83 ring taken from her junior year had come back, returned by a stranger who found her on Facebook.

“It’s back where it belongs,” said Angie Foster, who teased, “I didn’t want to give it up. I’ve had it longer than you have.”

Bilodeau, 45, remembers splitting the cost with her parents as a sophomore to pay for the silver and garnet class ring. When it was stolen in Lewiston her junior year, she didn’t figure she’d ever see it again.

Some time later — how many years passed and how it made the trip are a mystery — the ring was found one night by the cleaning crew at Happy Wheels in Winslow where Foster worked as a teenager.

“It was so pretty I didn’t want to leave it there,” she said.

Sometimes it stayed in her jewelry box and sometimes she wore it on her pinkie. About 15 years ago she started in earnest trying to find its original owner, with just the school, year and “MMB” engraved on the inside of the band.

Foster, who lives in Benton, said she phoned the high school. One person fit the description, Michelle Marie Bilodeau. So she had a name. It still took years to pay off.

“I always wanted to get it back to who it belonged to,” she said. “By accident, one day, I was sitting at work, ‘I wonder if she’s on Facebook?’”

When she looked, hundreds of Michelle Bilodeau’s popped up. Foster clicked on the third or fourth one, drawn by the picture, and saw right there: Edward Little High School.

Bilodeau had only started the account a few weeks before.

Foster said she knew, somehow, not to give up. Bilodeau had been shocked to hear someone was looking for her. The two met Friday at Hunan House to make the hand-off.

“I told her, I’ve had it for the first half of my life, she can have it for the second half of hers,” Foster said.

Bilodeau immediately tried pulling it on her ring finger. It was just a little too small. Three kids, a full life, that will happen, she said. There’s always getting it resized.

“You’ve made me so happy,” she told Foster. “I’m never going to forget you.”

[email protected]