Owner reunited with lost diamond ring found at Rogers wastewater treatment plant
A lost diamond ring found at the Rogers Wastewater Treatment Plant is now reunited with its owner, according to a news release from the Metropolitan Council.
The Met Council announced in April that workers had found a unique, gold ring “with a bunch of diamonds.” They then asked people who think the ring could be theirs to describe it and send in photos.
Hundreds of people contacted the Met Council, hoping the lost ring was theirs. Only one photo looked similar, so two jewelers compared the ring to the photo and confirmed it to be a match, according to the release.
“My daughter called me and she said, ‘Mom, you’re never going to believe this,'” said Mary Strand, the owner of the ring.
She said her daughter alerted her to news reports about a ring being discovered at the wastewater plant.
Strand believed it could be hers, after losing a gold ring back in 2010.
She said her husband had gotten her a ring for their 33rd wedding anniversary but it was a little too big.
“I reached over and flushed the toilet and the ring fell in and it was swirling around and I truly dove for it,” Strand explains.
Oddly enough, the Strands run a sewer business called Viking Sewer and Drain Services, so they have experience in retrieving items that have gone down drains.
She said they took the toilet outside and tried to shake out the ring, then put a sewer camera 200 feet down the sewer line to see if they could find it.
“We’ve saved a lot of rings and we really thought we could find hers but we couldn’t so we pretty much wrote it off,” David Strand said.
The Strands said they have thought about the ring several times over the past 13 years but never imagined it would be found.
“I would say it’s been on a journey for 13 years,” said John Tierney, mechanical maintenance manager for Metropolitan Council’s Environmental Services Division.
Tierney was one of three workers who found the ring in sewage back in March.
The ring is missing several stones and has damage to the band.
The Strands plan to get it reset, resized and repaired.
“I was so glad they found it. Now I don’t have to go get another one!” laughed David Strand.
They said they are excited to be reunited with the ring, 13 years later.
“This is the best of my expectations, you know? Somebody who genuinely had a love for each other and accidentally lost that ring and then it was found and delivered, that was the ideal story,” Tierney said.
Back in March, a maintenance crew was working on a piece of equipment that separates large and heavy items from the wastewater when a technician spotted a shiny object in the sand and grit and discovered that it was a diamond ring.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Council said they know the ring entered the wastewater stream near Rogers.
The Rogers facility opened in the 1960s, so he said it is possible the ring could have been trapped in debris for decades.