Luciana Elisa

Luciana is 21 and a student at UW-Milwaukee. She is working on her undergraduate degree in American Sign Language (ASL) Studies with a minor in English. She is planning on attending graduate school to study Educational Psychology with a focus in Learning & Development. Her career goal is to work in academic advising at the university level. In addition to languages, Luciana enjoys being involved with politics and works as the Executive Director for the Conservative Women's Movement at UWM. She also loves reading, playing computer games, cooking and playing with her cats. Currently, she is working in telecommunications for the hearing impaired as a captioning assistant at Captel, Inc.

Kevin Michael

Kevin, also 21, attends UW-Parkside and is finishing his degree in Computer Science. He has already completed his minor in Geography. Kevin has achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts. He is a very talented programmer and web designer and works as a software engineer at Thin Air Software, Inc. He is also a founding partner of Soarce Technologies, a custom web application, hosting and design company. He enjoys programming in his free time for work and personal projects, has an interest in photography, and airsofts with his friends. He looks forward to adopting Luciana's two cats as his own.

How They Met

Long ago at Forest Park Middle School, Luciana "the cute cello girl" sat first chair next to 2nd chair Kevin "the awkward and quiet cello boy". Kevin, of course, developed an instant attraction to Luciana, but it wouldn't be until high school that they became friends. Senior year - became really close friends and remained close through the first year of college at a 300 mile distance (Luciana in La Crosse, Kevin in Kenosha). Sophomore year after a really sweet Valentines Day package to a girl who wasn't even a girlfriend, Luciana realized that she was in love with Kevin and Kevin finally asked Luciana to be his girlfriend later that month. They managed a long-distance relationship until Luciana moved back to Milwaukee.

The Proposal - June 16, 2007

After a spending all morning and afternoon at the beach on a beautiful day with each other, Kevin took Luciana for a romantic walk at sunset to his family’s lake at sunset. Kevin led Luciana to his wooden raft, which laid ashore beside the lake in a secluded patch of tall grass. He then took and held Luciana and pulled the ring box from his pocket and proceeded to ask her to marry him. She said, “Yes” – just as she had when he first asked to go out with her two and a half years prior – and started opening the ring box to present her with the beautiful ring.
At this point, everything was perfect, except for a few pesky mosquitoes. Just as it seemed nothing could go wrong, the ring had dislodged itself from the garage it had belonged on the walk to the lake, and promptly rolled out of the box as he opened it. The ring could not have fell anymore direct – straight down through a crack between the boards of the raft. They heard the ring bounce for what seemed for an eternity. Panic stricken, Kevin immediately dropped to his knees to try to locate the ring between the cracks on the raft. He saw no ring. He searched every possible nook and cranny the raft could contain and all of the edge around the raft – still nothing. The ring had disappeared.
With the sunset beginning to fade, Kevin ran as fast as he could back to his house to find some tools and a flashlight to help search. Running back as fast as he could, they searched the raft with the flashlight as thoroughly as possible—still no sign of the ring. Now, believing that the ring took the one and most improbable path between the two floats mounted beneath the raft, Kevin requests the help of his father to help carefully move the raft to the nearby driveway. This should have immediately shown if the ring had fallen directly to the ground, but nothing. The ring was nowhere to be found! The three of them started to pull planks off the raft, look around the area the raft had been but their searching yielded nothing; the ring had disappeared. Nightfall soon proliferated and they were forced to stop the search for the night.
The day after, Melissa, girlfriend of Kevin’s older brother (Matt), and Kevin went out on a quest to find a high-grade metal detector around the area. After store-hopping for a couple hours, they return home with a metal detector to make searching drastically easier. Kevin, Matt and Melissa began searching the area in the sunlight for any trace of the ring. They cut down the four-foot-tall grass by hand with hand sickles, meticulously examined each area the metal detector beeped and booped for, dug in the mud, sifted through the much and water where the ring could have possibly rolled to, ripped apart the raft even more. They searched and searched in the heat. They searched for eight hours straight, until sundown came around again. There was still no sign of the ring. Tired and dirty, they gave up for the evening.
Over the next few days, Kevin continued searching and expanding the search area. Still nothing. Stupefied, Kevin ultimately is forced to give up the search. Soon , during the next week, Kevin took Luciana back to the jewelry store and explain their tale. They were received and consoled by the understanding staff who helped the two with deals and discounts to recreate the exact ring that had been claimed by his lake. Finally, Luciana had received her beautiful ring. Even through all of that, Luciana stood by his side, proving their love for each other.