Disaster Bears Gold ‘Miracle’ for Family of 2 Victims

The ring emerged from the darkness of the sea.

On that somber night it ended up in the net of a certain fisherman, who in the midst of so much sadness never saw it shining.

The next morning the fisherman found the ring--golden and well-worn--on the deck of the boat. And thus began an odyssey and a bittersweet footnote to the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261.

Everyone involved believes the ring with three red stones belonged to Bob Williams, 65, of Poulsbo, Wash., who along with his wife, Patty, 63, died in the crash.

To Williams’ daughter, the ring’s discovery is a sign from her father. They had made a promise: Whoever died first would send back a sign to the other, letting the survivor know that things were OK.

To the squid fishermen who found the ring, it was a chance to help grieving strangers and share a near-otherworldly bond.

“I feel there’s a reason this ring got on our boat,” said the vessel’s owner, Scott Jarvis of Oxnard. “It’s a miracle. It’s just a miracle.”

Williams’ daughter, Tracy Knizek of Suquamish, Wash., declined requests for interviews Friday, but in a prepared statement Knizek and her siblings thanked the fishermen for finding the ring.

“We were amazed and uplifted,” they said. “The story of this discovery is certainly a miracle and will become a family legend to pass on through the generations.”

The story of the ring has had odd twists at every step along the way--including what Jarvis described as aggressive attempts by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies Friday to confiscate the ring after news of its discovery surfaced.

On the night of the crash, Jarvis’ boat, the Meridian, wandered across the rough waters, its 30,000-watt lights flooding the seas as it searched for survivors and hauled in debris.

At the helm was Kevin Marquiss, 21, who with a small net pulled in a hat, mismatched shoes, a CD case.

“I was seeing a lot of stuff that my family would own,” Marquiss said, “stuff that belonged to people who hours before had a life just like my own. It was just weird.”

Following the orders of the Coast Guard, he took the debris to a designated collection boat and about 2 a.m., after a long, terrible night, he went home to sleep.

The next morning, he scrubbed away the squid ink and rinsed down the deck. Then he discovered what else had been pulled aboard.

“I moved a mat I had been standing on for stability,” he said. “I noticed something shiny in the hatch. It was pretty obvious that it was a ring.”

Not certain what to do, Jarvis called the Coast Guard to report the finding, he said. Because the response left him thinking that authorities would never search for the ring’s owner, he did some detective work on his own.

Some of those on the dock had identified it as a Mason’s ring. Hoping to find some information that would lead him to the owner, he called Masonic lodges in Seattle, San Francisco and Simi Valley. The calls led nowhere.

But the next morning, his wife read a list of victims in a local paper. That list included the name of Bob Williams--and the fact that he was a Mason and lived in Poulsbo, Wash.

Jarvis called the Poulsbo Masonic Lodge, and immediately the master said he believed the ring belonged to Williams. The ring bore the markings of a Masonic grandmaster rank, which Williams once held.

As it turned out, Marquiss’ family is also from Poulsbo.

The lodge called Knizek, who then contacted the boat owner, he recalled. In that conversation, she told him about the promise she had with her father.

“I got so choked up, I couldn’t talk,” Jarvis said. “I handed the phone to my wife, took my daughter in my arms and went and sat in a chair.”

The two families had agreed that Marquiss and a representative of Alaska Airlines would escort the ring this weekend to the family in Washington state, Jarvis said.

But according to Jarvis, a story of miracles and kept promises took a strange twist Friday when two sheriff’s deputies showed up on Jarvis’ doorstep demanding the ring from Jarvis’ wife, Mary.

Mary Jarvis said she didn’t expect the investigators’ threat. Either she hand over the ring, or risk being arrested.

“I told them if they had to arrest me, I’d be willing to be arrested, but that I couldn’t leave the baby,” said Mary Jarvis, who gave birth four months ago to Katy, the couple’s second child.

The family stood firm, and by midafternoon the Sheriff’s Department had backed off. Sheriff’s spokesman Eric Nishimoto downplayed Friday’s events, saying officers never intended to arrest anyone. He said it is a misdemeanor offense to withhold evidence, but “in discussions with the medical examiner, we’ve decided to drop it.”

“We are trying to be sensitive to the family’s need so we will allow the family to get it,” Nishimoto said. He added that the local medical examiner wanted a photograph of the ring for the record, but might have to rely on photos taken by a local newspaper.

Through it all, the Jarvises say, they were given a rare opportunity to bring some hope to an otherwise hopeless situation.

“I felt strongly that I could help somebody,” Jarvis explained. “We tried to do the right thing.”

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Times community news reporter Catherine Blake contributed to this story.