Retired police Detective Terrence Mulligan had given up all hope that he’d ever see his dad’s NYPD gold retirement ring after it was stolen from the family’s Staten Island home over 40 years ago.
But the so-called “shield ring” — engraved with his father’s badge number — shockingly made it back home last week thanks to a detective, a stranger from Boston and some pure luck.
The retirement rings, which are engraved with the word “detective” and “NYPD,” sell for up to $2,000 to $2,500 — but are worth much more to the proud fraternity.
Mulligan, 53, was only 8 when his dad, retired Detective Joe Mulligan, had his ring stolen. He and his seven siblings bought a replacement ring for $1,500 ring for their dad in 2010, seven years before he died — never thinking they’d see the original again.
That is until a kind-hearted stranger would found it lying on a Boston street last year.
Leona Mizer was out running daily chores when she spotted the gold ring in a metered parking spot on Beantown’s famed Beacon Street in the summer of 2024, her husband Kelly Mizer said.
“She was going to the grocery store there and she found this gold ring lying on the ground,” he said. “I was like ‘I wish there was a way to get it back to the owner, but how do you do that?’”
Instead, he simply dropped the ring – which had the elder Mulligan’s shield number 1741 engraved on it – in his drawer and carried on with life.
The Mizers didn’t think much about it until they moved to Maine recently with their two kids.
“Amidst moving and unpacking, we found the ring again,” Kelly Mizer said. “And I just had this idea, ‘Maybe it’s a badge number.’”
So he googled NYPD and the badge number 1741 and eventually came across Detective James Zozzaro. Then, he was able to locate the gumshoe’s number and called him.
“At first, he thought it was a joke,” Kelly Mizer recalled. “I sent him a picture of the ring.”
Each NYPD shield number is passed down to a new cop when a detective retires.
Kelly Mizer mailed the ring to Zozzaro at the 107 Precinct in Queens — and the detective picked up the search and did some sleuthing of his own to find its rightful owner.
While researching the five officers who had the shield number before him, Zozzaro learned that Joe Mulligan had a daughter who once lived in Boston.
“He got a cell phone number for my sister because she had a place in Boston at one time, and he figured, ‘Okay, Massachusetts, maybe she dropped the ring,’” Terrence Mulligan told The Post.
But his sister thought the call was a scam.
“She doesn’t trust anybody,” he joked. “She didn’t believe it. She’s like, ‘I’m not talking to you. I’m not giving you any information. I just don’t know who you are.’”
She offered to have her brother call the detective instead.
“James was so nice,” Terrence Mulligan said. “He’s like, ‘Yep, tell your brother to call me.’ And I did. He told me this crazy story.”
Mulligan and his wife drove from their Sparta, New Jersey, home to the city to recover the ring on Nov. 13 — happy the heirloom was home again.
Mulligan and his seven siblings were planning to give the ring to their mom at a dinner for her 89th birthday next month, but didn’t think they could wait that long.
“It’s a crazy story,” Mulligan said. “Somebody could have just hocked it. It’s just good people in the world, you know, they reached out to James and I give James all the credit in the world.
“My family is sideways right now. They can’t believe it, you know, really grateful. Wow.”
But one mystery remains.
“I guess what’s baffled everyone is how did the ring make it from New York all the way up to Boston lying on the street,” Kelly Mizer said.
The union that represents NYPD detectives lauded the gumshoe for his efforts.
“This is the kind of quiet, honorable act that defines NYPD detectives,” Detectives Endowment Association President Scott Munro said in a statement. “A detective went out of his way to return a cherished heirloom that had been missing for decades — not for recognition, but because it was the right thing to do.”
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