Posted on 11/19/2016 10:08:51 PM PST by nickcarraway
A needle in a haystack may be hard to find, but a Long Island woman topped that when she lost her wedding rings in a pile of garbage.
Colleen Dyckman panicked Monday morning when she realized she must have accidentally swept her engagement ring and wedding band into the garbage while cooking, CBS2’s Carolyn Gusoff reported.
“I knew in an instant I threw them out, because I knew I had cleaned the night before,” she said.
Dyckman frantically followed her garbage truck to the Babylon town dump, where she tearfully begged workers to stop before her trash and treasure were incinerated.
“She was visibly upset, she was ripping through garbage, disgusting stuff,” Jeremy Aretakis, of the Town of Babylon Recycling Center said.
Eight employees joined Dyckman and her husband as they searched through a mountain of muck.
“She didn’t stop, so none of us stopped,” Aretakis said.
They looked for the $5,000 rings that were placed on her finger with love nearly 20 years ago.
After about four hours, with hopes waning, her trash bags surfaced, but there were no rings inside.
Town employee Kim Weathers wasn’t convinced.
“I said, ‘I’m just doing to double check,’ and I double checked and opened one up and wow — the ring,” she said.
Buried between soggy cereal and slimy meat was the diamond in the rough.
“I started crying and hugging her,” Dyckman said.
“I was saying to myself, ‘I hope I find this ring,’ so I’m happy I found it, I really am,” Weather said.
“It was beautiful, it was like out of a movie,” Aretakis said. “One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The Dyckmans couldn’t thank the crew enough. They gave them all credit, plus boxes of pizza brownies.
Now, the rings are back where they belong.
“I wanted to give up, but they never did,” Dyckman said. “It’s like my faith in humanity is restored.”
Workers said they often dig through the dump, but rarely for something that’s so small and precious.
Knowing me on a slightly personal level, you can vouch that I wouldn’t have pocketed the ring, right Nick?
? More to the story
Sure. Never.
Sure. Never.
I heard my wife let out a shriek one afternoon, so I looked at her, she was staring at her ring - minus the diamond!
So I asked what she had been doing, and she said she was moving stuff in the freezer...
It took me a LONG TIME, and a LOT OF INSTRUCTION to my wife for her to carefully handle everything I took out of the freezer... eventually, I had it all out and mostly melted when I finally saw the diamond. Sitting on the bottom of the freezer surrounded by ice chunks.
She had it reset in a more robust setting and never lost it again.
She passed a few years after that, and I kinda went downhill from there, but am slowly getting over it.
True story.
You gave your lovely wife a tremendous gift by finding her diamond...something that represented someone unbelievably precious to her.
I’m so sorry for your loss, FRiend.
The angels are even more ecstatic when one of God’s chosen ones is recovered from the miry clay in regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
OK, off topic.
But WTH are pizza brownies?
I am so sorry for your loss.
Finally, after the day was nearly done, we remembered that I had received an award at the Marine Base that day so we drove there and searched the parking lot. After an hour's searching and the light was almost gone, I spotted a gleam on the pavement and it was her ring! It had only been run over once or so and easily fixed.
Makes that ring that much more precious.
Nice story!
That was my question too.
I’m glad you found it.
Me too! It sure makes it that much more romantic that we struggled so hard and we found it. Makes Jesus’ parable about the Lost Sheep that much more poignant.
I thought of Jesus’ parables myself.
When we bought my engagement ring, we discussed having 4 prongs or 6 with the jeweler.
He explained the difference and how with four prongs the diamond showed up better but how if one of the prongs broke, the diamond could slide out.
I figured that the slight difference in appearance that the six prongs made wasn’t going to be noticeable enough to warrant the risk of losing the stone if one of the prongs broke.
A similar thing happened to me. One day I was in a hurry and moving laundry from the washer into the dryer when I heard “ping, ping!” It was the diamond from my engagement ring!
I frantically looked everywhere for it, in the machine, in each piece of clothing that I was moving. I actually took apart the washing machine and put it back together after determining the diamond was not there. That took me almost a whole day to accomplish. It was sad time. I went without my engagement ring.
Then one day almost a year later, I got into a cleaning frenzy in the laundry room, and realized that somehow I had not looked around the dryer. I found a yardstick, and slid it back and forth underneath the dryer. Within a few seconds, the diamond surrounded by dryer dust bunnies rolled out! I was quite ecstatic and said a thank you prayer for it’s recovery. Yes, we got a sturdier mounting after that.
I’m sorry to hear about your wife, but your story is a neat one.
Here’s another:
A friend picked me up to go to lunch after her job of cleaning the stables, etc.
At the red light, she noticed that her diamond was gone.
So, we prayed then and there, “God, you know where it went. Please show it to her, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I gave her a few ideas about finding it at home using a flashlight at night.
She called me the following week - she had found it!
It was at the bottom of the horse water trough!
Lost one of the stones out of my expensive Mother’s ring, I was really upset, had one of those life time replacement policies, they replaced it, a week later same stone was gone, I ended up with a new replaced ring. Mine go in a glass on the bedroom dresser when I need to use bare hands and that glass sits in one place all the time. More women need to make that a practice. Never take your rings off in the bathroom or kitchen. Put them in a glass on the bedroom dresser.
Then there is my friend Lynn, she had to have her rings cut off that were well beyond $5K before surgery as she’d gained so much weight and had swollen hands. Not a happy camper, should have had them enlarged before it became necessary to have them cut off.
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