Woman Found Her Missing Wedding Rings With Help of Hero Sanitation Workers
They say one person’s trash is another person’s treasure, but sometimes that trash isn’t trash at all. Such was the case for 46-year-old Shannon Lombardo, who misplaced her wedding and engagement rings as she was cleaning them.
After scouring her apartment on New York City’s Upper West Side, Lombardo realized that she had accidentally thrown them in the garbage. She quickly got to work trying to recover them, going as far as to call 311 and the city’s Sanitation Department to see if they could locate her rings. Surprisingly, they were game to help her.
Not only did they temporarily suspend pickups to let Lombardo look through the garbage in her building to see if she could discover the rings there — they also helped her search a dump. Lombardo and her husband, Jim, trekked out to Fairview, N.J., to a location where trash is temporarily held before moving on to a landfill. The Sanitation Department was able to identify an area where the ring may have been, so the Lombardos joined some sanitation workers and dug through the 800-bag drop for an hour until they found the rings.
“Everyone was there to help out. It wasn’t a pretty job,” Shannon Lombardo told the New York Daily News. “There was mostly a lot of dog crap, coffee [grounds] and sauces — I was surprised at how wet it was.”
Ick. But for love, it’s all worth it! The Lombardos aren’t the only folks who have retrieved rings from hard-to-find places. Manhattan resident Wallace Collins lost his wedding ring after it slipped off his finger and fell through a sewer grate. When he was unable to retrieve it by himself or with the help of an associate, Con Edison swooped in to the rescue. Erin Carrozzo lost her wedding and engagement rings on Fire Island, New York, but a man with a metal detector found them and, through the magic of social media, managed to locate Carrozzo and return her precious sparklers.
Shannon Lombardo’s story is another reminder that just because you lose your wedding ring, it doesn’t mean you’ll never see it again.
“We are so pleased that Ms. Lombardo was able to get her rings back!” a spokesperson for the New York City Sanitation Department told Yahoo Style. “Thanks to coordinated efforts — starting with an initial call to 311, to the actions of NYC Sanitation personnel, to the final assistance of the New Jersey waste facility’s workers — Ms. Lombardo was able to retrieve these priceless treasures!”
Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style:
Woman Proudly Defends Her Engagement Ring After Being Shamed at Jewelry Store
Mariah Carey and James Packer: Who Gets the $10 Million Ring?
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