Florida man searches landfill for wife’s $10,000 ring – and finds it!

Brian McGuinn accidentally threw out his wife's custom engagement ring. And then he searched through a mountain of trash at the county landfill to retrieve it.

On October 30th, Brian's wife of five years, Anna, handed her husband her ring, asking him to put it in her jewelry box while she showered.

At the same time, Brian picked up a disposable razor and without thinking, he tossed both into the trash.

The couple didn't realize what had happened until the next morning — after Waste Management had already picked up the garbage from their Florida condo.

Anna, five months pregnant, burst into tears. Desperate to find her $10,000 ring, she called Wheelabrator, a division of Waste Management that processes the trash. Officials on the line, hesitant to offer much hope, said that Brian was welcome to come and search.

So he did.

Brian arrived at the county dump, suited up in a protective vest, suit and goggles, and, alongside plant worker Joel Ryan who leveled the trash with a bulldozer for easier searching, started to make his way through the piles where his neighbourhood's trash was dumped.

"Nastiness you wouldn't believe," Brian said of the garbage-digging. "It was absolutely disgusting. It stunk beyond belief. The smell was God-awful. Everything unsanitary you could think of crossed my path at least a couple times. I took an extraordinarily long shower and toothbrushes were used."

Then he saw it: a shiny object wedged between two brown bags. After just 30 minutes of searching (the Associated Press says it took 90 minutes), the ring was back in his possession.

"It looked like a screw and I reached down and it looped around my index finger," Brian told the Sun Sentinel. "I was ecstatic. It was like winning the lottery. It was probably one of the best moments ever."

"Perseverance," Brian said of the moral to the lost ring's story. "A lot of people don't find things; it's gone. But I knew I had to try."

As for Anna, she doesn't intend on ever taking off the ring again.