Rhode Island woman, 70, finds pearl while eating clams on date night — and turns stone into her engagement ring

A Rhode Island woman found a pearl while guzzling clams on a date night years ago and now uses the giant stone in her engagement ring.

Sandra “Sandy” Sikorski, 70, and her “soul mate” Ken Steinkamp, ​​75, were enjoying some hard clams at the Bridge Restaurant and Oyster Bar in Westerly, Rhode Island, over Christmas 2021, when they discovered the immaculate stone.

Steinkamp offered her the last on the platter, and “Then I tasted this big, round thing in my mouth, and I thought, ‘What the hell is this?'” Sikorski told WJAR.

“So I take it, spit it into my hand and put it on the table.”

The couple were stunned when they realized it was a shiny pearl she had spat out, and when Steinkamp went to propose two years later, he knew he wanted to use the stone in an engagement ring.

The Mercenaria pearl the couple had encountered was flawless, measuring 9.8 millimeters — which would qualify as six carats if it were a diamond — and has a perfect oval shape.

Experts say the shell had to sit untouched for nearly half a century to create a pearl of that size, which is unusual for Narragansett Bay, where the shell is believed to have originated.

Along the New England coast, only one in 5,000 hard water shells produces a pearl, most of which are “poor quality or damaged.”

But not the one Sikorski spat out.

“This has a really nice shine to it,” Steinkamp told the Boston sphere. ‘ That caught my eye. It’s rare to get one.’

The couple knew immediately that they wanted to use the pearl in an engagement ring one day and decided to have the ring made last month.

They sent it to Marc Fishbone, a renowned goldsmith in Connecticut.

Sikorski talked to Fishbone for about three hours about what she wanted for her ring, she said, and the couple were willing to wait a year for it to be completed.

But Fishbone completed the metalwork in just two weeks.

He poured the gold, making it solid so that the pearl did not need to be cut at all, and added two diamonds from Sikorski’s personal collection.

“I started looking at it and I went into some of my drawers to see what I had to play with,” Fishbone said. “I found a piece, I readjusted it, and I was able to take eight prongs and add them to the piece to make the pearl stand upright.”

“The piece turned out beautiful, much better than I ever imagined,” he said, adding that there were no blemishes on the pearl.

“When she came to pick him up, she almost cried and wanted to give me a big hug.”

Steinkamp also said he could hear his bride-to-be crying when he picked up the ring, which worried him at first and he stopped his car.

But his worry soon turned to joy when he realized Sikorski was stunned at how it turned out.

“I think it was wrapped that way,” she said. “It’s wrapped in 18-karat gold and very elegant; a little vintage. Because of the shine of the pearl, the gold matched it well.

“The yellow gold makes it look more special,” she explained. ‘The filigree (metal carving) made it look richer.’

Steinkamp finally proposed on July 8, and the couple decided to return to the restaurant to tell the staff “and they were excited about it.” They put it on their website,” he said.

Bridge Restaurant hostess Myra Dionisio said the eatery loved being the backdrop to their love story.

“I can’t even tell you about the thousands and thousands of oysters and cherry pit (clams) that everyone is shoveling every day,” she said. “Not once in five years has anyone said anything about finding a pearl.

“We need to hear more stories like this.”

Sikorski now wants to pass the ring on to her granddaughter one day.

“It’s honestly a great feeling,” she said. “It’s a vision, and seeing a vision come true.”

Steinkamp added that they had rings early in their relationship “just as a sign of our devotion, but this (pearl ring) reinforces the promise.

“I think it’s making a Hallmark movie,” he said.

Some people have since told the couple that they spent their entire lives searching for a hard shell pearl, considered one of the rarest gems.

“I’m humbled,” Sikorski said. “It’s possible to make something beautiful out of something you take for granted — a little thing you found in a shell.”