Because of the tenacious attention to detail of a public servant, a woman was reunited with her wedding ring after nine years.

In 2009, Paula Stanton was given a ring by her husband Michael to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, but it slipped off her fingers and she was left to conclude it had been accidentally flushed down the toilet. “It had been a little big on my finger, because it was winter time and my hands were smaller,” Stanton said. “I felt so bad about it. Sad and embarrassed.”

So distraught was she that three years later, when the public works department was doing some work on the sewer line, she alerted one of their workers to the possibility that her ring might be somewhere in the piping.

Public employee Ted Gogol had previously heard about the ring, and just happened to be doing some recent maintenance work by the Stanton house when he saw something glittery in the mud next to a manhole cover. Gogol reached out to Stanton, and after a boiling treatment of lemon juice and peroxide, the ring is back on her finger where it belongs. “People say around this time of year crazy things happen,” Gogol said. “She said it was her Christmas miracle.”

Potential Preaching Angles:

Wayward loved ones are never too far gone for God to redeem; even those who society has deemed as unclean can be redeemed and found again.

Source:

Staff Reporter, “9 years after being flushed, woman’s wedding ring appears,” SFGate (12-11-18)