A routine morning commute turned into panic for one New Jersey rail passenger when she accidentally flushed her gold wedding band down a train toilet — before maintenance crews rushed to the rescue.
After using the restroom on her North Jersey Coast Line train on July 7, Julie Angelicola washed her hands, but the sink was out of water.
She used tissues to wipe off the soap, accidentally pulling her wedding band off in the process before tossing the tissues — and her ring — in the toilet and flushing.
“I have a long ride ahead of me, and I just did not realize that I took off my wedding band, in the midst of that, threw everything in the toilet, flushed the toilet,” Julie Angelicola told NJ.com.
“I went back to my seat, and pretty quickly realized I did not have my wedding band on, which I wear every day,” the worried wife said.
Angelicola, who usually takes her ring off to sleep at night, immediately called her husband, Stephen, to check their home — but the prized possession was nowhere to be found.
So she alerted the conductors on the train, who wrote down her details, called the Long Branch Station, and instructed her to file a lost and found report at Penn Station.
“Everyone just felt so terrible for me and wanted to help, but they also were like, this is a really long shot,” Angelicola recalled to the outlet.
Knowing train car toilets empty into 50-gallon holding tanks, NJ Transit maintenance employees acted fast to locate the rail car in question, cut it from the train, and haul it to the Meadowlands Maintenance Complex before the bathroom had any more action.
“And the quicker we do this, the better,” said David DeGennaro, general superintendent of equipment at NJ Transit’s Meadowlands Maintenance Complex.
“Because you’re talking about a toilet tank, the longer the bathroom gets used, the worse it’s gonna get.”
At the shop, workers removed the tank.
“It was sitting there on top, just staring at you,” Eric Sanders, the complex’s service and inspection manager, told NJ.com.
“We knew that we had to get that train right away in order to get the ring.”
Angelicola got a call from a rep with NJ Transit right before she was supposed to leave on vacation.
“I said something to the effect of, ‘I appreciate the courtesy call, thanks for following up’ and he’s like, ‘oh no, I’m calling because we found it,’” she said.
“And I could not believe that.”
After running into one of the two conductors that helped her out, Angelicola told them, “believe it or not I’m going to pick it up.”
“He called to his coworkers, they were so excited.”
The ring — thoroughly disinfected — was returned to her at Penn Station Monday.
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