In 2010, Mary Strand, of Rogers, Minnesota, accidentally flushed her diamond ring down the toilet. Shitty luck. Her husband snaked the drain and even asked municipal worker to check nearby pipes, to no avail. Recently though, workers at a nearby wastewater plant were repairing a piece of equipment when they noticed a few objects in the, er, "muck" they had cleaned out. They found a chisel, a clamp, and, yep, a diamond ring. The Metropolitan Council publicly announced that a treasure had turned up and promised it would be returned to its rightful owner so long as a detailed description could be provided.
From Yahoo! Life:
Hundreds called in, hoping to recover long-lost heirlooms or memorials to once passionate courtships. Some of the stories were "heartbreaking," spokesperson Kai Peterson said in a news release. Among them were "an elderly woman hoping for a miracle for this memory of a deceased husband" and someone "lamenting that they had lost their ring the night of their wedding."
Strand was unaware of the ring's discovery until her daughter, who lives about an hour outside Rogers, found out about it while trawling a neighborhood message board. She called her mother[…]
Officials had two jewelers compare the ring to the one from Strand's photos, she said. Both confirmed they were a match[…]
Thirteen years in grit, muck and who knows what else had taken its toll. Four of the "itty bitty" diamonds had broken off, and the gold band is "really smudged," Strand said. But, she added, the marquise diamond is "absolutely gorgeous," and the ring as a whole is in remarkably good condition given what it has endured.
(Thanks, Chanté McCormick!)
