The platinum ring had been in Victor’s family for about a century. His great-grandmother hid the ring in her mouth when she left the then-Soviet Union in 1989, Victor said, and passed it down to family. Victor proposed to his wife, Susanna, with the ring two decades ago.
Susanna wore it every day on her left ring finger, but she took it off when she washed dishes to avoid damaging it. On July 26, she was cleaning the counter with a towel when she accidentally slid the ring — along with another one — into a trash can along with food scraps.
She didn’t realize her mistake until the next day, when Victor said he returned to his Brooklyn home and found his wife crying. Victor — who spoke on the condition of partial anonymity — said he figured his family heirloom ring was gone. He planned to ask a jeweler to make a copy.
But Victor also didn’t give up.
The next morning, he waited outside of his building to ask Javier Gomez, a New York City sanitation worker, if he could have access to the building’s trash. Gomez called his boss and arranged a time the next day for Victor to comb through about 20,000 pounds of trash at a waste transfer station in Brooklyn, which had accumulated from his building and another one the previous week. Each building is about 20 stories tall, Gomez said.
On July 29, Victor visited the waste transfer station and found that the trash, mostly containing food, diapers and clothing, spanned about 100 feet long. It smelled like rotten fish and made Victor’s eyes water.
“There’s no way that it survived,” Victor, 45, recalled thinking about the ring while surveying the trash pile.
Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for the New York City Department of Sanitation, said that people who lose valuable items can make an appointment to search through trash piles, and they are allowed to bring one person to help them. The department provides gloves, shovels and other tools, Gragnani said.
Victor, who runs a photography business with his wife, said his wife was working, and he didn’t want to bother his friends for a mission that was a “needle in a haystack.” While sanitation workers don’t typically help in the search, Gomez saw Victor was on his own and offered to lend a hand.
“There was no way he was going to find it by himself,” said Gomez, 55. “So, you know, I felt bad for the guy.”
Victor told Gomez that the rings were in a white trash bag with an orange drawstring that also contained three blue dog pee pads that his French bulldog, Joya, used. They split up to inspect different parts of the pile.
About an hour into the hunt — after they had looked through about 1/4 of the trash — Gomez said he saw a white bag near the bottom of the pile. He ripped it open and found three blue dog pee pads. Then he saw the platinum ring inside.
Gomez whistled for Victor, who scrambled across piles of garbage to reach Gomez, then smiled when he saw Gomez holding the ring.
“It was like truly a miracle,” Victor said.
Gomez dug through potato peels deeper in the bag to find the gold ring that Victor’s wife had also accidentally thrown into the trash. The New York City Department of Sanitation shared the retrieval story on social media Aug. 7.
Before he left the station, Victor posed for a photo with Gomez. Victor said he plans to pass the ring down to his 15-year-old son and display the photo at his son’s wedding, should he get married. Victor told Gomez to expect an invitation.
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