Anna Cornish remembers putting her wedding ring on the bathroom counter of her Bothell, Washington home after giving her children a bath in May.
She had a good night sleep but woke up to bad news.
“My husband went into the bathroom and said Anna, where’s your ring?” she told a Global News affiliate.
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The first thing the couple did was ask their four-year-old son Landon Cornish.
“We woke our son up and asked where did you put mamma’s ring, and he said he flushed it down the toilet. We were just in shock,” Anna told CBS.
A plumber came and put cameras in the pipes, but there was no sign of the ring.
As punishment, Anna and her husband Ryan took away Landon’s blanket for a few days to try to help him understand what he did was wrong.
A month and a half later, Ryan was on his way to work when he saw city workers down the street and asked for their help.
Jose Cervantes, who works on sewer maintenance with the City of Bothell Public Works knew immediately where to look.
“Where he lives there’s actually what’s called a belly in a pipe, a settled out piece of pipe, it’s a little lower so solids end up getting in there,” Cervantes said.
The next day Cervantes got permission to suck up all the sewage and debris in the pipe, dumped it out of the truck and hosed off the pile looking for the shiny ring.
“It’s kind of like gold mining except we’re only mining through human sewer,” he told a Global News affiliate.
It took a while, but in the sewage Cervantes found the ring still sparkling.
“It was shocking, amazing. We got the ring. Holy cow, it’s a one in a million shot.”
Now, Anna’s husband knew he had to surprise her, so he helped his son clean the ring and put it in a box.
“He goes, mom I’m so sorry, and he goes will you please forgive me?” Anna said. “Then he opened up the box with the ring inside, it was tears, elation.”
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But most are not as fortunate as the Cornish family. As one city worker explains it, it’s not easy to retrieve jewelry in the sewer system.
“We do get calls from time to time about things that get flushed down the drain, primarily jewelry such as earrings and rings and watches. We don’t typically have very good luck at finding these items,” said Bruce Todd, the superintendent of Vancouver’s sewer maintenance department.
The Cornish family said they won’t take any more risks. They plan on insuring the ring soon.
With files from Patricia Kozicka.