A family heirloom that had survived a dangerous journey out of the then-Soviet Union nearly a century ago ended up at the bottom of a New York garbage pile. For Victor, 45, letting it disappear was not an option. His wife Susanna had accidentally thrown two rings into the trash while cleaning their Brooklyn home. One was a platinum ring that had been in Victor’s family for about a century. His great-grandmother had hidden it in her mouth when she left the then-Soviet Union in 1989, Victor said, before it was passed down through the family.The ring had another personal connection. Victor had used it to propose to Susanna around two decades ago. She had worn it every day on her left ring finger. Then, on July 26, it disappeared.
The rings went into the trash by mistake
On July 26, while cleaning the kitchen counter with a towel, she accidentally pushed the ring, along with another gold ring, into a trash can.
As reported by The Washington Post, Susanna usually removed the ring while washing dishes because she did not want to damage it. On July 26, while cleaning the kitchen counter with a towel, she accidentally pushed the ring, along with another gold ring, into a trash can. There were food scraps in the bin, and she did not realise what had happened. It was only the following day that she noticed the rings were missing.Victor returned home to find his wife crying. At first, he assumed the family heirloom was gone for good. He thought about asking a jeweller to make a copy. But then he decided to try something that most people would probably consider impossible: finding the rings himself.The next morning, he waited outside his Brooklyn building and approached Javier Gomez, a New York City sanitation worker. Victor asked if there was any way he could get access to the building’s garbage. Gomez, 55, called his boss and arranged a time for Victor to search through the trash at a waste transfer station in Brooklyn.The garbage from Victor’s building and another building had already been collected. Together, it amounted to about 20,000 pounds of trash. Each building was around 20 storeys tall.The search was scheduled for July 29.
A 100-foot pile of garbage
When Victor arrived at the waste transfer station, he saw what he was up against. According to Victor, the pile was about 100 feet long and contained mostly food, diapers and clothing. The smell was so bad that it reminded him of rotten fish and made his eyes water. He looked at the huge pile and immediately had doubts. “There’s no way that it survived,” Victor recalled to The Washington Post.But he knew exactly what he was looking for. The rings had been inside a white trash bag with an orange drawstring. The bag also contained three blue dog pee pads used by the family’s French bulldog, Joya. That small detail would eventually help save the search.Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for the New York City Department of Sanitation, said people who lose valuable belongings can make an appointment to search through trash piles. They are also allowed to bring one person to help them. The sanitation department provides gloves, shovels and other tools.Victor runs a photography business with Susanna. She was working that day, and he did not want to ask friends to join him in what he described as a “needle in a haystack” search. So he started alone.
A sanitation worker decided to help
Victor split up from Gomez and began searching different sections of the garbage. Sanitation workers do not normally help people look for lost possessions. But Gomez saw Victor trying to tackle the enormous pile by himself. “There was no way he was going to find it by himself,” Gomez said. “So, you know, I felt bad for the guy.” He decided to help. The two men began going through the garbage separately, looking for the white bag with the orange drawstring and three blue dog pee pads. They were searching through thousands of pounds of discarded food, clothes and household waste. About an hour into the search, they had examined roughly one-fourth of the pile.Then Gomez spotted something. Near the bottom of the pile was a white trash bag. He pulled it out and ripped it open. Inside were three blue dog pee pads. It was the right bag. And then he saw it. The platinum ring was still inside. Gomez whistled for Victor. Victor scrambled across the piles of garbage to reach him. When he saw Gomez holding the family ring, he smiled.“It was like truly a miracle,” Victor said. But the search was not over. Gomez dug deeper into the bag, through potato peels and other waste. There was another ring inside. He found the gold ring that Susanna had also accidentally thrown away.
A ring that carried a family’s history
Image Courtesy: The Washington Post
The platinum ring was more than an expensive piece of jewellery. Victor said it had been in his family for about a century. His great-grandmother had hidden it in her mouth when she left the then-Soviet Union in 1989. She later passed it down through the family. Two decades ago, Victor used that same ring to propose to Susanna. For Susanna, it had become something she wore every day. That is why, after finding it in the garbage, Victor did not simply put it back on his wife’s finger and move on.He has already decided what will happen to it in the future. Victor said he plans to pass the ring down to his 15-year-old son. He also plans to keep a photograph of himself and Gomez from the day they found the rings and display it at his son’s wedding, if his son eventually gets married. And Gomez will be part of that memory.
The search became a story of its own
The New York City Department of Sanitation shared the retrieval story on social media on August 7. What could have ended as an ordinary case of lost jewellery instead became a story about a family heirloom, a determined husband and a sanitation worker who decided to spend his time helping a stranger search through thousands of pounds of garbage.
