LOS ANGELES (AP) -- It was one of those private pacts a daughter makes with her dad. The one who died first would send a signal to the other that all was well in the hereafter.
Two days after her mother and father plunged to their deaths on Alaska Airlines Flight 261, Tracy Knizek believes she got that message.A commercial fisherman who helped scoop debris from the crash site found the red-and-gold Mason's ring worn by her father, Bob Williams.
Until she was told of the ring's recovery, the Suquamish, Wash., woman had struggled to accept her parents' deaths.
"Maybe this is God's way of telling us that this is really happening and that everything is going to be OK, and that hopefully I'll hear from him again," she said Thursday in a telephone interview from her parents' home in neighboring Poulsbo.
It was only a year ago, after her grandfather died, that she reminded her father of an agreement they made years earlier.
"Ever since I was a little girl, my dad and I had a deal. Whoever died first, the other one would come back and tell them what it's like," she said. "It was just to let the other person know if it's OK, like we think it's going to be." That the ring was recovered at all seems as miraculous as the crash was tragic.
Oxnard fisherman Scott Jarvis' boat Meridian was part of a flotilla of commercial fishing boats that helped illuminate the crash scene Monday night while rescuers searched for survivors.
Jarvis, 37, and his nephew, 21-year-old Kevin Marquiss, pulled enough seat cushions, insulation and other debris from the water to cover the back deck of the 32-foot boat. Later, as they cleaned jet fuel off the decks, they discovered the ring nestled in a deck hatch. Studded with three ruby-colored jewels, it had a large capital G in the center -- that Jarvis later learned stood for "Grand Master Mason."
"It's like he sent it from heaven and just set it on the boat," Jarvis said.