First, I must apologize for the disgusting picture of this plumbers nasty hands… Moving on: Allison Berry’s ring fell off her hand as she went to flush the toilet at the Black Bear Diner in Phoenix, AZ on January 14. But this wasn’t a cracker jack box ring- it was a 7 carat, $70,000 diamond wedding ring that took over $6000 to recover.

City workers opened a pipe outside the restaurant and continuously flushed the toilet, hoping to push the ring out to the opening. When that didn’t work, the city called the office in suburban Tempe of Mr. Rooter, a plumbing services franchise based in Waco, Texas.

“This is going to be like dredging for a treasure chest in the ocean,” Mike Roberts, general manager of Mr. Rooter, said at the time.

Roberts guided a tiny video camera into the pipe with an infrared light attached. He eventually spotted the ring just 3 feet down and 5 feet over from where it was flushed. Then it took an hour-and-a-half of jackhammering and pipe removal before Roberts and a technician could recover the ring, eight hours after it fell in the toilet.

Mr. Rooter charged $5200, while the city’s bill came to $1000. Berry and her husband also tipped Roberts and the technician $400 each and gave $200 to a diner employee for staying late… Which is great, but did they pay to fix the bathroom that got jackhammered?

[image: AP]