Husband spends hours digging in NC landfill after wife loses engagement ring in trash
Farms can be messy.
For Kristin Hartness and Jay Yontz, their farm animal refuge is no exception.
“It’s very hard trying to have a safe place to put anything in our house since it’s grand central station for our rescue and animals are in every room which also means people are too,” Hartness said in a Facebook post.
On Jan. 16, Hartness said she took off her engagement ring to clean it before setting it down in the kitchen. When she went back to look for it two days later, the treasured ring was gone.
“(The ring) had been laying on a paper towel and my heart sank knowing that someone accidentally threw them away,” she said. “I was absolutely devastated.”
Hartness said she told her husband, Yontz, who began searching the house again, pulling out the stove and fridge.
Then, he called their local landfill.
“Jay had dumped two big bags yesterday and we knew they had to be in one of them,” Hartness said.
The landfill operator said the most recent trash load hadn’t been hauled away yet, and that if the couple wanted to, they could look through the trash.
“Without hesitation, Jay said ‘Let’s do it’ and ‘Tell me where I need to be and what time,’” Hartness said.
Yontz went to the landfill, and with the help of a couple workers, sifted through the entire mound of trash.
Yontz told WFMY News 2 his “optimism had gone away, because we went through the whole pile and (the worker) had moved everything up to the edge where they push it off and then there is dumpsters down below.”
“I called Kris and said no luck, I was probably going to head home,” he said. “I was literally like 30 seconds from giving up and they were shutting down and in front of me was a bag that looked like ours and it happened to be our trash bag.”
They took the bag to the side, dumped it out — and found the engagement ring staring back at them.
“Y’all, my dream man found my engagement ring!” Hartness said. “My diamond in the trash!”
Hartness also thanked the two landfill workers who helped Yontz search for hours.
“There are so many amazing humans in this universe,” she said. “I’ll never ever forget this day.”
The couple met in the U.S. Virgin Islands over a decade ago and have since worked together to build and operate Ziggy’s Refuge Farm Sanctuary, named after Hartness’ pet pig, Ziggy. Their sanctuary takes in neglected, abused or disabled farm animals in Providence, 45 miles northeast of Greensboro.
This story was originally published January 31, 2023 at 12:25 PM with the headline "Husband spends hours digging in NC landfill after wife loses engagement ring in trash."
