Bank employees climb into dumpster to search for wedding ring

April 23 (UPI) -- A North Dakota bank employee was reunited with her lost wedding band after her coworkers went diving in the dumpster -- only to later discover the ring was in the parking lot.

Trina Burns said she was leaving work at the American Trust Center bank in Bismarck when she noticed the wedding ring she has worn for nearly 32 years was missing from her finger.

"I thought I must not have put it on that morning. When I got home, I looked for a little bit and then I panicked a little and then started tearing everything apart," Burns told KFYR-TV.

Burns said she was working from home the next day, so she called her coworker, Alyssa Hanson, to ask her to keep an eye out for the ring at work.

Hanson, fellow bank employee Titus Gietzen and two other coworkers went out to the dumpster to see if the ring had ended up in the trash. Gietzen climbed inside.

"We thought the garbage bags would be a little bit higher up, but I had to start diving in a little bit. And then there were a few I couldn't quite reach so I decided to get all the way in," he said.

The workers ended their search defeated, after going through every bag in the dumpster with no sign of the ring.

Their hope was reignited the next morning when the ring turned up in the parking lot, right next to the spot where Burns parked two days earlier.

Burns' coworkers said they would gladly climb into the dumpster again if it meant helping out their colleague.

"She's got 32 years of memories in that wedding ring. You can't just replace that," Hanson said.

Employees at a Texas nail salon went dumpster diving in August 2020 to find a customer's lost wedding ring. Rosana Ramirez said she didn't realize until after leaving Q Nails & Salon in Portland that she didn't have her ring.

The owner of the salon reviewed security camera footage and discovered the ring had been thrown out with a disposable table cloth. The salon's employees climbed into the dumpster and went through every bag, finding Ramirez' ring in the very last bag.