Colleen Dyckman, of Long Island, with the rings she accidentally tossed in the trash. (CBS New York)
Workers at a Long Island, N.Y., garbage dump accomplished the seemingly impossible this week, sifting through heaps of trash for several hours to find a woman’s precious diamond engagement ring and wedding band.
The rings were worth $5,000 and belonged to Colleen Dyckman of North Babylon, who woke up Monday and realized she had accidentally tossed them in the trash while cooking the night before, CBS New York reports.
She followed the garbage truck that picked up her trash to the Babylon town dump, where she burst into tears as she started frantically searching for the rings.
“She was visibly upset, she was ripping through garbage, disgusting stuff,” town employee Jeremy Aretakis told the station.
Aretakis and seven others at the dump joined Dyckman and her husband in the messy search.
After about four hours, the rings were still missing.
“She was kind of giving up hope and saying she didn’t want to continue looking for it,” another town employee, Ed Wiggins, told ABC New York.
But a third town employee, Kim Weathers, wasn’t ready to quit.
“Her husband, he opened the bag and started going through all his garbage, and as he looked through it, I doubled-checked it,” Weathers told ABC. “And as I was double-checking it I opened it: Voila, the ring.”
A grateful Dyckman told the station she returned to the dump with pizza and brownies as a thank you.
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