KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A Knoxville couple is reunited with items they say they forgot about until they got a call saying a bag was found at the bottom of the Tennessee River with their IDs.
Harold and Carmen Hicks were boating on the Tennessee River with friends near Louisville and anchored their boat in a cove. When they pulled up the anchor, they found a waterlogged bag with an array of items in it.
Harold said curiosity got the best of them and they went through the bag. They found a library card and SCUBA license with the name Cliff Amos.
Harold called Cliff and Victoria Amos and told them what they found. The Amoses decided to meet to retrieve the mysterious bag.
As they started looking through the bag, they found what they identified as Cliff's old jewelry box and the pieces of the puzzle began to click.
"I recognized the jewelry box drawer," Victoria said. "We did have a theft and that's when I started digging and I looked back through my calendars and found out it was in 2006."
As the Amoses kept digging through the 17-year-old bag of treasure, they found old class rings, jewelry from Victoria's great-aunt and Cliff's father's cuff links.
"I didn't think I would ever see that again," Cliff said. "And that was one of the things that he gave me, and I don't have a whole lot of what he gave me, but I got that. And to get it back was like getting back a little piece of him."
The Hicks said they were glad they could reunite the couple with their long-lost belongings.
"We're just happy that we could have helped, you know, bring back those treasures that were important to them," Carmen Hicks said. "Certainly not important to other people."