Yeh, you are probably right. But, let’s think this through a little bit more. Even if the legitimate owner does come forward, it seems like she would have a hard case to prove. If Goodwill did put out a notice looking for an owner of a 17,000 dollar ring, can you imagine how many scumbags would try to claim it?
Obviously, they’d need to require some fairly solid evidence. But it’s quite likely that the donor would 1) have a Goodwill tax receipt for a pile of stuff donated recently at a Pennsylvania location that feeds to the Harrisburg distribution center, and some evidence that the ring belonged to their family, like an old picture of mom (who can be documented to have just died or moved to a nursing home, and had her house cleaned out) in which she’s wearing the ring and it’s visible enough for pretty good identification. There may also be some documentation in her papers somewhere showing she once owned it, e.g. an old insurance policy which listed it and which had a detailed description of it, or an appraisal certificate.
And the approach they’re taking now hardly avoids the problem of lots of scumbags trying to claim it. They’ve announced to the media that it was found with a bunch of costume jewelry, so obviously an accidental donation, and they’ve announced that it will posted on Goodwill’s auction site (obviously with a photo and detailed description of weight of the diamond, etc). Now scumbags will have some advance notice and be able to try to cook up phony “evidence” that it came from their family.
If Goodwill had made a public announcement that they were trying to find the owner of this accidentally donated ring, but given limited information about the ring itself, while giving more detailed information as to the time window and locations where it could have been donated, then that would have provided some alert to people who possibly were the real donors, to ask family members “Has anybody seen Mom’s wedding ring?”, and if they realize the family is missing something like this, they could contact Goodwill and provide a detailed description to see if it’s a match.