Firefighter and wife "rescue" ring.

John Kilcooley is a lieutenant with the Boynton Beach, Florida, Fire Rescue unit, but he and his wife, Una, recently were recognized for a "rescue" that had nothing to do with a life-threatening emergency.

The story began when the Kilcooleys decided to remodel their bathroom and discovered a three-carat diamond ring hidden behind a light fixture. The couple initially were pretty nonchalant about their find. "We didn't think too much of it," Mr. Kilcooley told the Palm Beach Post. But after learning of the ring's value from a local jeweler, they decided to track down the previous owners of their home, Bill and Marlene Kiraly.

Una Kilcooley reached Marlene Kiraly by phone and asked her if she had ever lost anything while living at her old house. Mrs. Kiraly then told Una that she had lost her deceased mother's ring. She had asked her husband to hide the ring her mother had given her just before she died 23 years ago. Unfortunately, Mr. Kiraly did such a good job that they couldn't remember where it was and never found it!

The ring remained hidden until the Kilcooleys found it. "[Mrs. Kiraly] started crying and said [it was] her mother's ring," John Kilcooley said in an AP interview. "We could have sold the ring, but if I would have lost something or [Una] would have lost something, we'd want somebody to track us down."

The Kilcooleys' action was simply part of their habitual practice of the Golden Rule--to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Mrs. Kilcooley recently returned a wallet she found in the supermarket to its owner. The couple seemed a bit amused by the fact that people from national TV networks started contacting them about the incident. The Kiralys, to show their thanks, offered to fix the Kilcooleys' hurricane-damaged outdoor screens.