The Goodness of America.

Answered Prayer

On December 19th of last year, Mrs. Diana Kurtz of New Hartford, Connecticut, lost her car keys. As reported by the December 31st Hartford Courant, Mrs. Kurtz prayed that the keys would turn up. Her prayers were answered, and then some.

Eighteen years ago, Mrs. Kurtz had received a one-carat diamond engagement ring costing about $1,500 from her then-fiancee Michael Kurtz (now her husband of 17 years). She eventually had it soldered to her wedding band, but a couple of years later lost the ensemble, along with an onyx ring. The Kurtzes suspected that they fell down a sink in a bathroom where Mrs. Kurtz left them to dry after painting a room in their home.

The couple long ago abandoned hope of finding the rings. Then, on the afternoon of the day she lost her car keys, Mrs. Kurtz received a phone call from Bill Zuerblis, a treatment operator at the Metropolitan District Commission's sewage treatment plant in Hartford, who asked if she had lost something. She thought Zuerblis was asking about her keys, since he did not immediately say what he had found. He wanted to make sure that she had indeed lost something. "Finally it dawns on me' Mrs. Kurtz recalled for the Courant, "My heart started pounding, and I said he found my wedding ring."

Actually, Zuerblis had found both of the lost rings. A few days earlier, a malfunctioning pump had forced him to work inside a 15-foot-deep wastewater processing pool. As summarized by the Courant, Zuerblis "was unclogging a drain at the plant, which treats nearly 60 million gallons of sewage each day, when he first noticed a sparkling object -- the diamond -- in the muck. About 20 minutes later, he found the onyx ring under some rocks, just as he was about to vacuum it up with a hose."

Initially, Zuerblis thought that the rings were costume jewelry, since he and his coworkers often come across cheap rings and other similar items while sifting debris. But then he noticed the inscription "P.O.M.G." and recognized it as the initials of a slogan ("Peace of Mind Guaranteed") used by famed Hartford jeweler Bill Savitt. "I knew it was the real thing," he told the Courant, "because I remember watching the Bill Savitt commercials when I was a little kid." In addition to the slogan, the inside of the diamond's band was engraved with "Love," the date "9/14/85," and the initials "D.M.R." and "M.J.K."

Zuerblis told the Courant that he and his fellow workers had often dreamed of finding an expensive ring and splitting the proceeds, but he never considered keeping or selling them without first trying to locate their owner.