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Miracle at Schwartz Lagoon
A lost and found tale about sunken treasure and the bond of friendship. Find the story here.
DESPAIR SWEPT OVER STEPHEN Schwartz like the waves in which he’d just been swimming.
Not even 30 minutes after snorkeling in the Intracoastal Waterway behind his Singer Island home, the retired lighting salesman made a horrifying discovery: His wedding ring, the gold band that hugged his finger for the past 51 years, was gone.
Schwartz knew where it went. Sitting on his back patio, his gaze drifted from the white tan line on his ringless finger to the vast waterway at the end of his yard, stretching to the distant Blue Heron Bridge and, beyond it, Peanut Island, the Palm Beach Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean. “I almost fainted,” he recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. It was a scary moment.”
There was no point of even trying to hide the news from his wife, Diane: She was sitting right there when her husband realized the precious ring was missing. “I didn’t know what to do,” Schwartz, 77, said. “I called the boys.” The “boys” are Andy Earl and Carter Viss, longtime friends Schwartz met after he started volunteering at Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach eight years ago. Earl, 36, and Viss, 26, are technicians at Loggerhead, where the three men bonded through a shared love of the ocean and marine life.
“For me, having young friends like that is keeping me young,’’ Schwartz said with a laugh. “I became sort of like a father figure to them because their parents live out of town.” They go fishing on Schwartz’s boat. And they often snorkel together at Phil Foster Park under the Blue Heron Bridge, known for its colorful array of tropical fish. One of their favorite places to enter the Intracoastal is north of the bridge, behind Schwartz’s house on the west side of Singer Island, a spot they nicknamed “Schwartz Lagoon.” On Feb. 28, the three men enjoyed another great day of snorkeling. When they finished, Earl and Viss said good-bye and headed home and Schwartz retreated to the back patio to relax with his wife.
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