Every once in a while, a story comes along that completely restores my faith in humanity.
Not only is this next story completely heartwarming, it's also downright shocking…and might just make you believe in a higher power. Back in 1959, Joyce Wharton lost both of her parents when their small plane crashed in a vast forest in Washington state.
Wharton was newly married and only 23 at the time. She never gave up hope, but did not expect to ever find anything from her parents', Hazel and Hugh Armstrong's, plane, which wasn't discovered until 14 years later in 1973.
Fast forward to 1997, when a logger named Nick Buchanan was working near the crash site in Centralia, Washington and made a shocking discovery. Buchanan stumbled upon Wharton's mother's wedding ring and connected it to the 1959 plane crash, but had no information on who it might have belonged to.
Determined to give the ring to a surviving family member, Buchanan searched for years, until he and his nephew found Wharton on the internet in December of 2014. "It was almost like reaching out to touch my mom," Wharton told ABC News. "It was like reaching out to the past because the last time I saw the ring it was a couple of weeks before they left" on their flight.
Wharton also told ABC News she was especially touched to receive the ring so close to the holidays, calling it a true Christmas miracle. "It renews all those thoughts of my mom and my dad. It was just wonderful."
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