LAMAR COUNTY, Texas (KXII) – When an EF3 tornado destroyed the home near Hopewell, Texas, where Dakota Hudson hid an engagement ring, he never thought he’d see it again.
Against all odds, Hudson didn’t just find his missing engagement ring on Tuesday- he popped the question his girlfriend, Lauren Patterson has been waiting seven years to receive.
“It’s about f****** time,” said Patterson.
The Lamar County tornado left Lauren and Dakota with almost nothing.
“I told her, I was like, ‘I lost your engagement ring and your wedding band,’ and she told me it was alright,” said Hudson. “All she needed was me.”
But when the Paris Junior College softball team arrived to help clean up, they refused to leave without finding that special ring.
“When you tell 20 girls someone is going to get engaged if they find a ring, they are going to find it,” said Hudson.
“I was just kind of digging through the mud in this certain particular spot, and I kept digging there,” said Kate Rainey. “I don’t know why- I felt led to dig right there, and I found a little piece of a metal circle, and it was not metal. It was gold. I didn’t believe it. When I found it, I was like, ‘there’s no way I just found it.’”
The engagement ring was found seven yards from its hiding place in the closet, torn from its box, and buried two inches underground.
“All the glory goes to God,” said Hudson. “I wasn’t going to wait anymore.”
In a moment where all felt lost, they had each other, for better or for worse.
“Finally, you had a moment to smile, and it was a real smile,” said Patterson. “It was a very surreal moment. I couldn’t have asked for a better proposal.”
The couple said they also found their wedding band about three feet from the engagement ring.
And they’ll start planning the wedding after they pick up from the tornado.
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