Imagine realizing a ring your family protected for four generations was accidentally thrown in the trash.
Imagine realizing a ring your family protected for four generations was accidentally thrown in the trash.
By the time you notice, the garbage truck is already gone.
And somewhere inside a load that could contain up to 20,000 pounds of New York City garbage is something your family could never replace.
That’s the call the New York City Department of Sanitation received from a Brooklyn resident who realized two treasured pieces of jewelry had accidentally ended up in the trash.
One was a gold-and-diamond promise ring.
The other was a platinum-and-diamond engagement ring that had been passed down through the same family for four generations.
Think about that feeling for a moment.
Not because of what the rings were worth.
Because one of them had been worn, protected and handed from one generation to the next before suddenly disappearing inside a New York City garbage truck.
Most people probably would have assumed it was gone forever.
New York City sanitation workers didn’t.
The Department of Sanitation figured out which truck had collected the trash and isolated its load before it could disappear into the rest of the city’s garbage.
Then the truck was emptied.
Up to 20,000 pounds of garbage were slowly spread across the floor so the rings could be searched for.
Somewhere inside all of it were two rings small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
And incredibly, according to the Department of Sanitation, they were found in about 10 minutes.
The promise ring was there.
So was the four-generation engagement ring.
After surviving decades inside one family, it had somehow survived a trip through a garbage compacting system too.
There are jobs most of us probably don’t think much about until we desperately need the people doing them.
On this day, New York City sanitation workers could have simply said there was nothing they could do.
Instead, they stopped what would normally happen to that load of garbage and gave a stranger a chance to recover something that could never truly be replaced.
And it worked.
What would you say to the sanitation workers who helped make this incredible recovery possible? I hope you’ll leave them a message below.
And now I’m curious.
What’s something you accidentally lost, misplaced or threw away that you still wish you could have back?
Tell us all the story behind it.
Source: NYC Dept. of Sanitation
