After a few prayers and phone calls the Squitieris realised her rings were in the rubbish which had just been picked up so wouldn’t have reached the dump yet.
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Carla Squitieri was washing dishes in her Missouri home when she took off her wedding rings, placing them on a paper towel in the kitchen.
“I was like a lunatic, ripping the house up”, Carla Squitieri said.
Thankfully, Bernie managed to convince the company to stop so that he and Carla could search for the ring.
“I said the trash man’s gone already”.
It was the case of missing wedding rings, two rings lost in 8 tons of trash.
Bernie Squitieri, from St. Louis, accidentally threw the 12.5 carat ring and an anniversary band in the rubbish after his wife had left them on a paper towel left on the kitchen worktop.
“The fact that he found it and showed it to us and gave it back to us”, Bernie Squitieri explained, “that gave us hope that there’s still good, honest people in St. Louis, Mo”.
Bernie said: ‘We had these white jumpsuits on, we had helmets, masks with goggles, these little tweezers’. Her husband cleaned up around the sink and the rings landed in the garbage.
Carla Squitieri said that finding the ring was a bit like winning the lottery.
Minutes before they hit the landfill, Meridian diverted their truck to a transfer station.
Carla Squitieri described feeling immediate relief. Along with the couple, several workers dug through an area that was 30 feet wide and 100 feet long.
Carla added: “I think we’re blessed”. Nine times out of 10, the item is never found, said Joe Evans, operations manager for Meridian.
She couldn’t find her rings. I was raised a certain way and I knew it’d have more meaning to them than it would have for me”.
Bernie Squitieri said that the rings were insured, but being able to have the ring back had more sentimental value than money.
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“I was like, ‘Yeah, I found it!’ ” Evans told KMOV”.
