Regretfully, the Novice class stones have been lost in the mail. We have contacted the Postal Inspection Service (federal police) and the Los Angeles Police department about this. They are both actively working to look for the package that contained the stones. I have also contacted a private detective friend and asked for his help.
Part of the reason for this loss has to do with procedures which have never existed until now. The SSC used to be run by the good old boys who handled things the best way they knew how, but without a written procedure. That procedure has now been created and once approved by our officers and board it will hopefully resolve all of the issues that have shown themselves in the past few weeks.
Regarding the reason that we have not released the results of the SSC for all other divisions, this information has always been released in the December newsletter. We will be returning the stones, the certificates and the awards for the other divisions in the next few days. The primary reason that they have not been returned till now is that the Pre-Master, Master and Grand Master stones have just finished being judged and it takes time to make out certificates and recreate and produce the awards for the top 3 places. I was hoping that the Novice stones would show up in the mean time so we could release everything at one time.
I still have hope that the Novice stones will be found so that they can be judged and eventually be returned.
Tom Mitchell, President
United States Faceters Guild