INDIANAPOLIS — There's something about race day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that touches fans in a unique way.
"I think it would only be fair to say I'm obsessed. I also have an IMS tattoo. This is my happy place," Alyssa Ruklic said.
Ruklic went to the Sonsio Grand Prix at IMS on Saturday, May 11.
"I met some friends down in the road course, Turn 1 and 2 on the viewing mounds, and we were watching the INDY NXT race," Ruklic said.
In a span of about 40 minutes, she lost something that she desperately wants to find.
She was wearing a necklace with a pendant on it in the shape of a race car. She took a selfie while wearing it. Then, she and her friends walked to Pagoda Plaza to get a kabob.
"I took a selfie to send to (a friend) and, looking back now, I noticed it was gone, and that was about 2:14 p.m.," Ruklic said.
The necklace wasn't just an ordinary piece of jewelry for Ruklic.
"My grandparents purchased it for me between (ages) 10 and 13, so about 30 years ago. They both since passed, and they were both incredibly special people to me," Ruklic said.
She said her grandparents were lifelong Indy 500 fans and lived in their Speedway home they built in the 1960s.
"My grandfather was a spotter here in the short chute between (Turns) 1 and 2, along with my great uncle Bob, who was also a docent at the museum," Ruklic said.
Their passion for IndyCar and motorsports was passed onto Ruklic.
Her first Indy 500 was in 1988, and she said she's only missed two races since.
On Tuesday, Ruklic went back to Turn 1 and 2 searching for what was lost.
"I don't know what else to do at this point," Ruklic said.
On Monday, she combed the area for three hours with help from IMS ground crews, hoping to find the pendant that means so much.
"Our family lost our gram in 2022 and, like I said, we were incredibly close. I lived with them for a couple years. I helped take care of my grandfather. He was sick with dementia for several years," Ruklic said.
He died in 2013.
"It put that much more special emotion into that necklace, and it made it that much harder to lose it because they were that much more special to me," Ruklic said.
Ruklic hopes to one day be reunited with her pendant.
"It means too much to me. It's not worth anything truly, monetarily," Ruklic said. "To me, sentimentally, it's worth everything."
Ruklic said if anyone finds her necklace, they can reach out to her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at her username @GasolineAly.