AFlorida couple opened a gift of the past on Christmas morning after their engagement ring, which had been missing for over 20 years, was found in a familiar spot a few days before.
Nick and Shaina Day, of Lakeland, Fla., were unwrapping presents on Dec. 25 when they couldn’t believe their eyes – the ring they thought was gone forever was suddenly back in their hands.
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Shaina told Fox 13 Tampa Bay she and Nick were newly engaged when she accidentally flushed her ring down the toilet at his parents house.
“I’d taken my ring off. It was sitting on the counter, so when I sopped up the water, I guess I didn’t pay attention very well snagged my ring in the process and tossed it in the toilet and flushed it,” she said.
Understandably frantic, Shaina said she climbed down into the septic tank at the home of her now in-laws with a hose to suck everything up. Once she did that, she pumped it through a hose over a window screen and into a 55-gallon drum in hopes of catching the lost ring.
After all of that effort, the ring was nowhere to be found. Until last week when Nick’s parents had to replace their toilet.
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The ring reportedly fell out when the plumber unhooked the toilet from the ground and dumped the excess water into the tub to avoid it dripping throughout the house.
Nick’s parents took the ring, wrapped it up in a miniature ceramic toilet and gifted it back to the couple on Christmas morning. They told Fox 13 they couldn’t believe the ring was sitting in a toilet pipe all these years later.
Nick said the sweet surprise brought tears to his and Shaina’s eyes.
“To know that everyone cared enough about it and thought it was so cool that they didn’t tell us it was an actual genuine surprise. It was.” Nick said.
The ring was broken, but the diamond was still intact. After a cleaning, the ring is reportedly still shining just as bright as it was more than 20 years ago.
“That just is absolutely amazing that it’s just been sitting there, because we had just thought it was gone. It was never coming back. It’s hard to believe,” Shaina said.
The couple said the ring is “now more meaningful than ever.”
