Nine months ago, Giranda, her son and his friends had gone off-roading at the sand dunes near Pismo Beach when her $20,000 bracelet disappeared. Devastated, she filed a report with a park ranger, but assumed it was gone for good.
"Nobody was ever going to be able to find it, and if they did, they weren't going to turn it in," Giranda said she thought at the time.
Months later on a holiday weekend, retired firefighter Joe Mingham spotted something in the sand. When he realized it was a bracelet, he took it to a jeweler to have it checked out.
"They said, 'Joe, there's somebody out there is crying and missing their bracelet.'" Giranda said.
Mingham set out to find the owner, going from police to the state parks department and finally the park ranger who remembered the tearful woman who reported losing her bracelet.
The two met up two weeks ago in Modesto so Mingham could turn it over.
"Every time I talk to him, I just tell him how wonderful he is and truly awesome and awe-inspiring. I don't know what I did to deserve to be so lucky," Giranda said.
Giranda calls Mingham her angel and said it's in his blood to be hero.
