Paula Stanton of New Jersey was heartbroken nine years ago when she lost a diamond ring she was given for her 20th wedding anniversary.
She’d accidentally flushed it down the toilet, and, at least usually, what goes down does not come back up in those scenarios.
But there is, apparently, an exception to every rule.
According to The Press of Atlantic City newspaper, when Stanton and her husband, Michael, returned from visiting their son for Thanksgiving, they had a letter from the public works department in Somers Point, NJ, where they live.
The letter was asking them to contact the department, for unspecified reasons.
When Stanton called, she reached Ted Gogol, a 20-year employee at the department. He told her he had found a ring in a sewer line near their house.
“I was only in a manhole less than 400 feet away from their house when I saw something shiny sitting in the mud and debris,” he told The Press. “I realized it was a ring, and I remembered the woman who was looking for a ring.”
Stanton had mentioned it to Gogol a few years prior, just in case.
“I told her really nicely that the chances of us finding it … well, just in passing, we’d keep an eye out for it,” Gogol said he’d told her back then, according to The Press.
“I was thrilled. Stunned. I could not believe it,” Stanton told WPVI in Philadelphia.
Gogol told the news station “that ring didn’t want to leave her family.”
According to The Press, Stanton boiled it in a peroxide and lemon juice mix on the advice of a jeweler.
Now she’s wearing both it and the replacement.
“People say around this time of year, crazy things happen,” Gogol told The Press. “She said it was her Christmas miracle.”
