When recently cut Tampa Bay Buccaneers outside linebacker Demone Harris' phone buzzed with a 410 area code on Oct. 17 -- first with a text and then a phone call -- he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Not only were the Baltimore Ravens signing him to their practice squad, but the lost engagement ring he planned to propose to his girlfriend with had been located and the Ravens were overnighting it to him.
Harris had brought the ring with him to his Oct. 15 workout in Baltimore, in part, so his girlfriend, Arianna Marinelli, wouldn’t find it, but also because it looked like he would have to fly directly to Buffalo for the proposal, which he had spent months planning to coincide with the Bucs’ bye week.
“About an hour and 20 minutes into my flight [back], I noticed that the ring was gone -- it was missing,” Harris said. “I wasn’t freaking out. I just kept my composure. I’m like, ‘The ring’s missing, you have no job right now, but everything’s gonna be fine. My faith is so strong. When adversity like that happens to you, it only means that something really good is about to happen.'”
It did. The manager of housekeeping at the Hyatt Place where Harris stayed, Yvonne Colahar, had found the ring in the hotel room’s kitchen area.
“I thought it was a trash bag at first,” said Colahar, who has been with the hotel for 20 years. “I picked it up, looked inside and was like, 'OMG. Like, wow.'"
The Ravens picked up the ring and overnighted it to Harris, in time for him to pop the question. Marinelli said yes.
“I’m indebted to this franchise forever,” said Harris, who had been cut by the Bucs four times since entering the league as an undrafted free agent out of Buffalo in 2018.
“This is the woman of my dreams that I’ve been dating for seven years. We’ve had our ups and downs, but she’s been with me through thick and thin, been with me regardless, before I was in the NFL,” Harris added. “We’ve been together since my senior year of high school. ... When I had nothing, she slept with me in the basement of my home in the projects on an air mattress. ... I grew up in the East Ferry Projects in Buffalo. ... There were never any complaints. It was, ‘I’m just happy to be with you right now.'”
When Harris returned to Baltimore this week, his first order of business was finding Colahar, a mother of three and grandmother of four who also works part time as a housekeeper at the Ravens’ facility.
He presented her with two gift cards totaling $1,000.
“I told her to go pay some bills ... go get ahead of her bills, just something nice,” Harris said. “My mother was a housekeeper at Erie County Medical Center at Buffalo for so many years working the night shifts. I just related to her story. She was just a genuine human, a genuine person. People aren’t like that anymore. I was so grateful for that.”
“She was ecstatic,” Harris continued. “It was just as special for me as it was for her.”
Colahar was appreciative.
“I was like, ‘I was just doing my job.’ And he goes, ‘No. You were doing more than that. Because without it, I couldn’t have done what I did,’" Colahar explained.
"It’s good to be honest, because without that, there’s nothing.”
Hotel assistant general manager Nina Shoemaker called Colahar the “heart of our hotel.”
“She’s an amazing employee," Shoemaker said. "She never calls out. She works seven days a week sometimes if we’re short-staffed. She is a great leader for her team.”
Colahar described what she told Harris: “'You know, once you’re happy, you made your girlfriend happy -- that’s what counts.'"
“I appreciate what he did. He’s generous," she said of the linebacker. "I realize he was brought up good. He could be a son I have. That is how I would raise my son. I am so glad I did something good and honorable today, and I’m still gonna be doing that.”