SAN DIEGO — A United States Marine’s golden ring, discovered on a mountaintop north of the Arctic Circle, is helping a Poway woman connect with the father she never knew.
It sounds like something out of a movie, and now it is. The documentary “The Ring and The Mountain” made its U.S. premiere on the USS Midway on Monday.
Abby Pilger Boretto was just 15 months old when her father passed away on Sept. 23, 1972.
Lt. Henry N. Pilger died in a helicopter crash over Grytoya Island, 200 miles above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway. It was at the height of the Cold War, during a NATO training exercise known as Operation Strong Express.
The cause of the crash has never been determined, but it killed Lt. Pilger and 4 other marines on the helicopter with him.
WATCH: The Ring and the Mountain Trailer
In October 1993, a Norwegian doctor named Hans Krogstad discovered a gold ring with a blue star sapphire on Grytoya Island. Engraved with "Henry N. Pilger" and bearing the insignia of the U.S. Naval Academy, the ring led Krogstad to metal fragments and a green military glove, remnants of the helicopter crash 21 years earlier.
The ring eventually found its way back to Abby and her mother through a Navy commander at the U.S. Embassy. Abby was 22 years old at the time and she tucked it away in her memory box.
“I wasn't equipped. I didn't understand. I don't think we knew where Norway was when I was 21/22 years old. I didn’t have a grasp. You’re still learning to adult at that point," Abby said.
Decades later, in 2020, approaching her 50th birthday and reflecting on her life, Abby revisited her memory box. She looked at the brown envelope containing that ring and the letter from Hans, and felt an overwhelming urge to express gratitude.
So she started a journey to find him, and to get answers about her father’s death.
“None of these families knew what happened to their loved one. Most of us just said we lost our loved one in Vietnam because it was easy. No one really understood NATO at that time or understood where Norway was or understood what these mission were about. They were training exercises preparing for war," Abby said.
When we met Abby beside the USS Midway, she wore her father’s ring around her neck. She showed us it’s slightly misshaped, and rough on one side from getting scraped or hit. Her father’s name is inscribed inside the band.
“It's a treasured piece for me. My father wore this around his finger. It was the symbol of my parents’ marriage. It gives me a sense of him, a sense that he is here with me guiding me," Abby said.
Abby made her way to Norway, to Hans, and to that mountaintop where Hans found the ring. She recorded it all in “The Ring and The Mountain.”
“These 5 men deserve their stories told. They are legends. They are heroes," Abby said.