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Jan 08, 2024

Flushed but not forgotten: woman reunited with ring after 13 years

Minnesota woman’s 33rd anniversary ring went down the toilet, but workers

Minnesota woman's 33rd anniversary ring went down the toilet, but workers recently recovered it and tracked its owner down

Thirteen years after she accidentally flushed it down the toilet, a Minnesota woman's pipe dream came true: she was reunited with the gold diamond ring once gifted to her by her husband.

"Oh my gosh, this is my ring," Strand said at the metropolitan council office in Rogers when she was presented with the ring for the first time since losing it. "It's nice to see it again."

Mary Strand, 71, was given the ring by her husband for their 33rd wedding anniversary in 2010. One day while washing her hands in their downstairs bathroom, her ring was knocked over. Strand said she dived for the ring as it swirled perilously around the toilet, but she was too late. The ring – and her hopes of retrieving it – went down the toilet.

Her husband's attempts to remove the toilet and shake it outside and even snake a sewer camera down the line were draining, and they ultimately failed.

More than a decade later, Strand was alerted to the newly discovered ring by her daughter, who found out about it on a neighborhood social media page after it had been finally found by local sewage workers and a search was launched for its original owner.

"Mom, it's got to be your ring," her daughter told Strand.

The ring had been discovered in Rogers, Minnesota, by three metropolitan council wastewater treatment workers. As they were fixing a malfunctioning machine, they came across a chisel, a clamp and Strand's diamond ring.

John Tierney, the manager of mechanical maintenance at the Rogers plant, called the odds of finding a ring in this way "astronomical".

In a statement, he said: "This ring could have been lost as long as 62 years ago or as recently as a couple of weeks. One thing that is known is that the ring would’ve entered the wastewater stream somewhere near Rogers, in north-west Hennepin county."

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Hundreds of people called and emailed the plant in hopes it was their ring they once lost, including someone who lost their ring on their wedding night and an elderly woman hoping for "a miracle for this memory of a deceased husband".

It's not the first time Strand has lost an expensive ring. In an interview with the Washington Post, she said she misplaced two other valuable pieces of jewelry: a five-sapphire-studded ring given to her as a Christmas present from co-workers and her original engagement ring, for which the recently found gold diamond ring was a replacement.