The wedding and engagement rings Katherine Armstrong designed for herself symbolized her pact with a man who was gone much of the time.

Her husband flew Navy fighter jets, and for most of their dozen years together, even at the birth of their first son, he was serving overseas. On her left hand, the antique-meets-modern rings signaled he would be coming home.

Family photo (ENLARGE)

Alan and Katherine Armstrong with their sons Jackson (left) and Adam.

Special (ENLARGE)

The bride designed her platinum and diamond wedding ring set, which is missing.

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Last week, it was Katherine, 35, who was suddenly gone — the victim of an April 30 car wreck — and so was her $5,000 set of rings.

Grady Memorial Hospital, where she was airlifted that day, documented the receipt of her jewelry. Then the rings disappeared.

"I have a 20-month-old who will never know his mother. I have a 4 1/2-year-old whose memories of her will be thin," Alan Armstrong says of sons Adam and Jackson. "These rings were so much her. She was fancy and frilly. She looked like she walked out of a model shoot.

"Now there's nothing I have that our sons can one day give to their wives, and I really want our sons to have these rings."

Alan Armstrong, 40, works as chief financial officer at Lenox Financial Mortgage in Buckhead, and his boss has offered a $20,000 reward. Anyone with information should contact the Atlanta Police Department.

Hospital officials are continuing "diligent attempts to recover the rings," according to a statement released by Grady spokeswoman Denise Simpson.

"We understand the value that the rings have to him and his family. A thorough investigation of this matter has been conducted," the statement says. "Unfortunately, at this point, we have not been able to determine exactly what happened."

Atlanta police met with Grady security Thursday "to find out their policy and procedures dealing with deceased's property," Atlanta police Detective P.J. Roberson said Thursday. "We're trying to find out where the gap is."

The rings were tinged with sadness from the beginning.

Katherine Armstrong designed them for their Oct. 20, 2002, wedding in California. Store-bought rings would not do because she "was the pickiest person in the world," her husband says.

She chose platinum and diamonds — just like his grandmother's rings. A craftsman in Los Angeles followed her design.

Two days before the ceremony, a midair collision of fighter jets claimed four Black Ace pilots whom Alan Armstrong worked alongside.

The ever-present threat of death in his line of work, on the eve of their wedding, "made our relationship and our wedding and our rings that much more special," Alan says. He slipped them on her during a somber, simple ceremony on the Pacific coastline.

The family moved to Atlanta three years ago when Alan wrapped up his active duty, which included more than 60 combat missions in Bosnia and Iraq. Katherine worked as a pharmaceutical rep and loved design and decorating.

On April 30, she was traveling north on I-85 near Flat Shoals Road in her Chrysler Town & Country minivan, her husband says, when she hit an armored car broken down in the middle of the highway.

The last morning her family saw her, they ate breakfast as usual in their home near Emory University.

She was wearing her rings.