On Sept. 27, 1951, Daikichi Furuta, a fruit packer at the Aguilar Ranch in Penryn, received confirmation against long odds, that his $300 diamond ring was found. The week before, Furuta had been packing peaches and it was during his second day that he realized his ring was missing from his finger. Desperately, he and other fruit packers searched through 150 boxes, but it was not there.
The first boxes he packed the morning before had already been shipped via train to New York. Furuta reached out to Tom Perry, the Penryn Growers Association manager, and Perry sent a teletype to their New York sales manager. The sales manager responded Sept. 27 that the ring was found after searching through a few boxes and was shipped back to Daikichi Furuta of Penryn. According to most inflation calculators, what cost $300 in 1951 would cost more than $3,500 today.
Photo: Inspecting pears in a Penryn fruit shed, c. 1953 (Merv Doolittle Collection)
Photograph by Merv Doolittle. L-R: Nancy Carson, L.C. Jacobs
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