A woman in Minnesota has been reunited with an anniversary ring she accidentally flushed down the toilet 13 years ago.
It was found in a sewage treatment plant just 1,000 feet from the woman’s home, in time to wear it for her 46th wedding anniversary.
Mary Strand received the ring from her husband Dave as an anniversary present after 33 years of wedlock, but while using the downstairs bathroom, the wet, perhaps soapy, perhaps incorrectly-sized ring, slipped off and spiraled down the porcelain throne into oblivion.
As it turned out, Dave ran a drain and sewage company and quickly used a camera to scour 200 feet of drain pipe to see if he could spot the ring. Alas, it seemed to have journeyed into the great brown beyond.
“I was thinking, ‘He’ll never buy me another ring,’ that’s what I was thinking,” Mary said with a huge laugh in front of reporters on Wednesday. “I felt really bad, because it was a gift.”
13 years later, John Tierney, a mechanical maintenance manager for the city of Roger’s Metropolitan Council’s nine wastewater treatment plants, was shoveling debris from one of the equipment with a few coworkers when they saw something sparkling.
After they put out the call on their Twitter account above, literally hundreds of people who had lost wedding rings called in, but because of the distinctive form, it was easy to determine whom it didn’t belong to.
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One photo sent in looked a perfect match, and after professional examination they determined it was indeed Strand who could claim the ring.
“By the way, the water treatment plant in Rogers where Mary’s ring was found is located on Diamond Lake Road,” wrote KARE 11 news. “Coincidence? We think not.”
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