{"id":322682,"date":"2026-08-16T19:48:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T19:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/322682\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T19:48:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T19:48:53","slug":"brooklyn-man-digs-through-20000-pounds-of-garbage-to-find-a-family-heirloom-ring-after-his-wife-accidentally-trashed-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/322682\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn man digs through 20,000 pounds of garbage to find a family heirloom ring after his wife accidentally trashed it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Garbage<\/a> Patrick Fallon <\/p>\n

In 1989, a woman fled the Soviet Union with a platinum ring hidden in her mouth. She passed it down to family, eventually reaching a 45-year-old named Victor, in Brooklyn, who proposed to his wife, Susanna, with the ring two decades ago. <\/p>\n

Victor, who spoke to the Washington Post<\/a> with partial anonymity, had planned to pass it down again to his 15-year-old son, should he get married some day. Unfortunately, Susanna accidentally trashed it. <\/p>\n

Must Read <\/p>\n

To avoid damaging the ring while washing the dishes on July 26, Susanna took it off and left it on the countertop, which she wiped down with a towel, accidentally sliding the family heirloom, along with another ring and some scraps of food, into the garbage bin. She didn’t realize, however, until the next day \u2014 after the trash had already been taken out. <\/p>\n

Victor told The Washington Post that he figured his family heirloom was gone and had planned to ask a jeweler to make a copy. <\/p>\n

“There’s no way that it survived,” he said. Still, he wasn’t willing to give up without a fight. <\/p>\n

Finding a needle in a haystack <\/p>\n

The following morning, Victor waited outside of his Brooklyn apartment building for Javier Gomez, a 55-year-old New York City sanitation worker, to ask for permission to access the complex’s trash area. Gomez was able to arrange a time a few days later \u2014 on July 29 \u2014 for Victor to visit a nearby waste transfer station that had accumulated about 20,000 pounds of garbage spanning 100 feet from both Victor’s building and another building. <\/p>\n

Gomez, who told the Washington Post that he “felt bad for the guy,” helped Victor look for the “needle in a haystack,” knowing that “there was no way he was going to find it by himself.” <\/p>\n

Together, they attempted to track down a white trash bag with an orange drawstring that Susanna had taken out \u2014 one that also contained potato peels and dog pee pads from Victor’s French bulldog \u2014 in a heap of dirty diapers, rotting food and more. <\/p>\n

About an hour into the search and about a quarter of the way through the mountain of trash, Gomez spotted the bag \u2014 and the platinum ring inside. <\/p>\n

“It was like truly a miracle,” Victor told the Washington Post. <\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

He told Gomez to expect an invitation to his son’s future wedding, where he intends to display a photograph of Gomez and him finding the family heirloom. <\/p>\n

Read More: Vanguard reveals what’s coming for U.S. stocks \u2014 and it could be bad news for this group of investors<\/a> <\/p>\n

What to do if you mistakenly trash something valuable <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Victor’s story is not an isolated one. People can mistakenly throw out or lose valuable items at any time. <\/p>\n

Just recently, a lottery player threw away a ticket<\/a> that was worth \u20ac1 million, more than $1.1 million, at a shop in Bitonto, in Italy’s Apulia region. He got in touch with the garbage truck that had collected the trash containing the ticket and was taken to a site where waste workers searched for \u2014 and somehow found \u2014 the “small piece of paper hidden in a mountain of waste.” <\/p>\n

Another man in Seville, Spain, picked up a painting<\/a> that a family had accidentally left outside their house; the man mistook the painting for curbside garbage, and he grabbed it because he liked the frame. The painting, which the family never intended to throw away, ended up being worth $170,000. <\/p>\n

There are also tons of stories of older Americans hiding inheritances<\/a> around their homes \u2014 under mattresses, between the pages of books and even in aluminum foil in the freezer \u2014 for their family members to find. Sometimes, that money ends up hidden forever or accidentally binned when people clean out their deceased loved ones’ homes. <\/p>\n

If you accidentally toss something valuable, like a family heirloom, in the trash, there are some steps you can take to try to get it back \u2014 and hope that luck is on your side, as it was for Victor. <\/p>\n

First, you should act as quickly as possible. <\/p>\n

“As soon as you realize something is missing, begin your search,” writes Prime Dumpster<\/a>. “For items lost in public dumpsters, contact the property manager or waste-management company within one to two hours of the loss.” <\/p>\n

For items lost in public spaces, “contact relevant staff (store managers, security personnel, transit authorities) and file a lost item report. They may be able to set you up with a retrieval service, like Gomez did for Victor. <\/p>\n

“Keep records of all communications, including names, dates and details of conversations with authorities or waste-management personnel,” Prime Dumpster adds. “This documentation can be helpful if you need to follow up or file insurance claims.” <\/p>\n

And if you’re able to visit a sanitation site to search for your valuable item, make sure to tread carefully. These sites can contain hazardous materials and sharp objects, as well as harmful bacteria. If possible, request the help of trained sanitation staff who may be able to either provide you with safety equipment for your search or search on your behalf. <\/p>\n

What To Read Next <\/p>\n

Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise’s best stories and exclusive interviews first \u2014 clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com<\/a> under the title: Brooklyn man digs through 20,000 pounds of garbage to find a family heirloom ring after his wife accidentally trashed it<\/a> <\/p>\n

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Fallon In 1989, a woman fled the Soviet Union with a platinum ring hidden in her mouth.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,4683,121575,121576,9,24,63,121577,99231,1212],"class_list":["post-322682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-family","tag-family-heirloom","tag-javier-gomez","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-susanna","tag-victor","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}