Engagement Ring Flushed Down The Toilet Miraculously Found By Kind Hearted Sewer Workers
A devastated mum whose antique engagement ring disappeared down the U-bend, is overjoyed after sewer works hunt turns up the prized piece of jewellery
When her daughter accidentally flushed her antique engagement ring down the toilet, Cindy Vriens was distraught.
But with a lot of help from her local sewer workers, and an incredible lucky break, the mum from Boiling Springs in Pennsylvania is delighted to have it back on her finger (hopefully fully cleaned up).
The diamond ring, surrounded by sapphires was was particularly special to Vriens because it had been given to her by her grandmother Bess Rex, who passed away, when Vriens got married 36 years ago.
The accident happened when Vriens took her daughter to a doctors appointment. The little girl was playing with the ring and accidentally dropped it down the toilet. And flushed.
"I called my husband and cried," Vriens said. "I called my best friend and cried."
They tried to rescue the ring from the toilet but it was clear that it was long gone. It has a Friday and Vriens didn't think to call the local sewer authority until the Monday, making finding the ring seem pretty impossible.
But she gave it a go anyway. She called the Lancaster Area Sewer Authority (LASA) workers and spoke to maintenance director Albert Knepp.
"When I called them, they couldn't have been any nicer," she said, but they didn't hold out much hope of finding her ring. LASA get a few calls like this a year and most of the time they're futile.
"One of them said to me, 'I gotta be honest with you. Your ring is probably at the bottom of the Susquehanna River by now.
"But they said they'd take a look anyway."
Knepp explained: "If we get a call like this and the line we'd have to look into is pretty busy, we know we're not going to find anything."
But it just so happned the sewer line where the ring would have gone is not a heavily used route and probably hadn't been in use over the weekend.
"I figured it was a least worth a shot," Knepp said and dispatched LASA workers Rik Pabon, Tim Millhouse and Brian Kendig to take a look. Not a pleasant job when you think about it.
No ring was to be found amid the matter in the sewer but the men didn't give up and decided to flush it through with water to see if the ring would get stuck in the U-shaped trap they knew existed between the building and a manhole cover.
And would you believe it - it did just that!
"They were very, very lucky," Knepp said. "These situations usually don't turn out this way."
When Vriens heard she was overjoyed.
"They asked me to describe my ring, and when I did, they said, 'We found it,'" she said. "It was a miracle."
As a thank you she baked the victorious search party a tray of chocolate bars and headed over to retrieve her ring.
"It was all I could think to bring," Vriens said. "They absolutely wouldn't let me pay them, so I figured I'd bake something for them.
"I will never forget what they did for me."
Not meaning to lower the tone but we're not sure chocolate bars were quite the appropriate baked goods for sewage workers...hopefully they appreciated them!
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