Brian McGuinn stood before a 9-ton mountain of smelly, rotten garbage, knowing it was his only chance to go from zero to hero.
The
night before, he’d accidentally tossed his wife’s 1.5-carat diamond
engagement ring into the trash — along with his disposable razor. (click below to read more)
In
the intervening hours since the night of Oct. 30, the custom-designed
platinum ring he’d given Anna McGuinn, his wife of five years, had gone
from the bathroom waste basket to the Margate-neighborhood trash bin to
the Wheelabrator dump in Pompano Beach.
The
crew at the dump gave McGuinn a mask, thick leather gloves, a hard hat
and a full protective suit that made him look like a space man.
“I had a fighting chance,” Brian McGuinn said.
But
the dump crew warned him to not get his hopes up. In all the years
people had come to the dump looking for their valuables, only one woman
had found what she was looking for — and that was after searching three
days for eight hours each day.
Still, he waded into the 10-foot high pile debris, filled with rotten eggs, dirty diapers and chicken carcasses.
Overcome by the stench, McGuinn, 34, threw up.
About
20 minutes into his search, Joel Ryan, a utility operator at
Wheelabrator, offered to get a bulldozer and level out the pile to make
it easier.
The driver who’d picked up the garbage from the McGuinns’ community dump suggested he look in the far end of the pile.
Just
10 minutes later, McGuinn noticed something familiar: the hot pink cup
from Menchies, his wife’s favorite spot for frozen yogurt. He dived
toward the cup and started to dig frantically. He uncovered the couple’s
garbage bag.
Just one problem: He hadn’t tied it closed, and many of the contents were missing.
Brian
McGuinn stopped and said a prayer. As he opened his eyes, he spotted a
familiar shower cap and conditioner bottle. He began lifting other bags
and found the disposable razor.
Still, no platinum ring.
With
the thick leather gloves he’d been given, McGuinn couldn’t feel
anything as delicate at the missing ring. He had only one choice left:
take off the glove and plunge his naked hand into the 5-inch pool of
black sludge.
“It had been raining profusely, there was like five inches of nastiness,’’ he said.
McGuinn
felt around, thinking he had found a nail. But when he pulled his
sludge-covered hand from the pile, McGuinn let out a Tarzan-like yell.
He was holding the diamond ring.
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