Small miracle reunites flushed ring, owner

Published: May 30, 2007 | 6307th good news item since 2003

A ring in a toilet is never a good thing — especially when it’s made of diamonds.

Alma F. Coate-Wilson, 98, of Olympia accidentally flushed her $8,000, 1.6-carat wedding ring down the toilet in the middle of the night two months ago, she said Thursday.

She got it back this week.

“My letter did it,” she said.

Coate-Wilson wrote a letter to the Olympia Public Works Department that touched all the employees who saw it.

“It said, ‘I believe in miracles,’ ” recalled Gary Franks, a supervisor there. Maintenance workers Bill Davis and Jean Wright were sent to the scene.

They put a type of TV camera down the sewer line but didn’t see anything. So they flushed the main line, blocking solids using pea gravel. They rifled through the solids with a garden hose and found the ring.

Franks said the department seldom gets requests like this and usually doesn’t have the time to try to fulfill them. But when they saw the letter, they “wanted to try to do something for this person.”

This week, Coate-Wilson received a phone call that Public Works had a gift that would interest her. About an hour later, four people were at the door, and they showed her the ring.

“I was floored,” she said. “I knew it was forever.” Davis said he and Wright were excited to return the ring.

“We both got goose bumps thinking about it,” he said. “She wasn’t even expecting it.” Davis said he thought they had a slim chance of finding it but wanted to try because of her letter.

“I was the happiest girl in the world,” Coate-Wilson said, giggling. “I was married to the most wonderful man in the world.”

Coate-Wilson, a retired teacher, had the ring for 39 years and was married to Gilbert Coate for 23 years. After his death, she married Lee Wilson, a fishing buddy of her first husband’s.

“Until my death, I wanted to have it (the ring), of course,” she said.

Published in Found
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