A South Carolina woman almost recycled something extremely precious last month when throwing materials into bins at a Greenville recycling plant.
Public Works employees spent hours searching piles of recycling materials to find the ring, safely returning it to her on Jan. 28.
The woman, Melanie Harper, emailed the city the night before and said she lost her ring at the Rutherford Road recycling center.
“I know the likelihood of finding this is slim to none,” she wrote. “But, if the ring is found during the course of processing the recycling, I would be most appreciative if someone could contact me.”
Travis Golden works streets for the Public Works department, keeping streets clean and picking up trash off the side of the road.
He’s the one who made the find.
“It was a pretty big-sized pile,” he told USA TODAY Thursday afternoon. “You wouldn’t think you would find a ring in that big ol’ pile … We kind of found two fake rings in the pile before we even found the real one.”