Bride-to-Be Makes Supreme Sacrifice to Retrieve Ring Trashed With Beans

A Rancho Bernardo woman who accidentally threw away her engagement ring tracked down the trash truck and dug through mounds of refuse to find the ring Wednesday in the city landfill.

Helen Geer took off her $3,000 ring before making meat loaf at her home Tuesday night.

“I was in a hurry, so when I finished, I just dumped everything into this can of refried beans,” Geer explained.

She didn’t realize she had lost the ring until she went to work the next morning.

“I immediately left work and went home to look for it,” Geer said, adding that she had received the ring from her fiance about three months ago and that it has 15 diamonds in it. The ring is also uninsured.

When Geer discovered that the ring had been thrown away, she became frantic because she also realized that her trash had been picked up that morning.

Geer called the city’s Waste Management Department about 10:30 a.m. in a panic and was told that, unless workers could catch the truck before it dumped its load in the city’s landfill at Miramar, “there was no way I was going to get my ring back,” Geer said. She decided to go to the landfill.

Geer changed into jeans, a heavy shirt, boots and gloves. But, as she prepared to leave her home in the 10000 block of Grandee Court, she heard the garbage truck down the street.

“I ran out there, and I told the driver, ‘Your supervisor is looking for you,’ ” Geer said. “And the guy said, ‘But I have two more hours left.’

“And I said, ‘No, your supervisor is looking for you. You have to go down to the landfill immediately.’

“So then I got in my car and followed him to the landfill.”

The Miramar Solid Waste Disposal Facility at 5180 Convoy St. receives about 4,400 tons of refuse a day and each truck has a capacity of about 10 to 11 tons, said Rory Clay, the landfill manager.

About six times a year someone will call and ask to dig through the trash for a lost item, Clay said.

“Typically, it’s money--quite frequently people will put money in an envelope,” he said, “and someone else in the house will throw away the envelope. . . . This woman was desperate.”

At the landfill, the truck was unloaded in a special area. After paying a $30 fee and signing a waiver, Geer proceeded to scrounge through refuse that was about 2 feet high.

Workers helped her find her bag within 30 minutes, but “unfortunately the can was crushed,” Clay said.

In a rush to open the can, Geer cut herself. The can was eventually pried open, but the workers still weren’t able to find the ring amid all the refried beans, Clay said.

“We offered to rinse the can out for her, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She took the can home to rinse it herself,” Clay said.

He got a call from Geer at 1:40 p.m. saying she had found the ring.

Geer said she had yet to tell her fiance about the incident.

“He knows I lost it, and I told him I found it, but he doesn’t know how I found it.”