Did you accidentally donate your wedding ring?

Someone donated a little more than they probably meant to when they dropped off a load of old gym shoes for a recycling program.

Workers found a woman's wedding band when they were going through a batch of donated gym shoes recently, said Kay McKeen, executive director of the Glen Ellyn-based eco-advocacy group School and Community Assistance for Recycling & Composting Education.

"I have no idea where it came from," she said. "Nothing would make us happier than to get this to the person this ring belongs to."

SCARCE is wrapping up its annual five-week Reuse-A-Shoe collection program sponsored by Nike. The program keeps old gym shoes out of landfills by grinding them up into tiny bits and reusing them to resurface fields, courts, tracks and playgrounds.

McKeen said she is expecting more than 15,000 pairs of shoes this year. And since they come from a variety of sources at a variety of drop-off locations, they have no idea where the ring was initially lost.

So far, no one has called to inquire about it.

And though she hasn't taken the ring to a jeweler, McKeen is sure it's not costume jewelry.

"This is something important to someone, you can tell," she said. "You can tell when you look at it that it's a pretty nice ring."

She is keeping mum about the description of the ring and other details about how it came into their possession to ensure that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. She suggested anyone who believes it might be their ring should come to the SCARCE offices at 799 Roosevelt Road in Glen Ellyn with a picture of the ring they lost.

"We had a worker going through a donation and it just fell out," she said.

McKeen said she wants to take the ring to a jeweler to see if there's a possibly an inscription that has been worn down and become virtually invisible to the naked eye.

"I just don't know what else to do," she said.

McKeen doesn't have any plans to hock the ring to fund a new compost heap any time soon.

"We just want to get this back to someone who was doing something nice for us," she said.