Widow recovers diamonds in the rough

A dig through the trash reunited a Bay Shore woman with her accidentally buried treasure this week.

A Long Island hauling company spent 2 1/2 hours Thursday searching through its trucks before it found Santa-Cruz Woodyear's wedding rings, which had disappeared the day before when two truckloads of furniture were removed from her Bay Shore apartment.

The 84-year-old widow, recovering from hip-replacement surgery, was headed to her refrigerator for a late-night snack Wednesday when she realized that the rings were gone.

"Where are my rings?" she thought to herself.

Ken Olsen, owner of a Long Island 1-800-Got-Junk franchise, said his workers pored over truckloads of trash, garbage and furniture before finding the rings in a small bag deep inside one vehicle.

"I was digging and digging and digging, and I was hoping that it was there," he said Friday. He added: "I found it, and I really couldn't believe it."

The rings hold special memories for Woodyear, whose husband died 34 years ago and whose only son died 18 years ago.

"My whole life has been brought back to me," she said after her diamond engagement ring, her wedding band and her husband's wedding band were returned to her Thursday afternoon. "I'm elated. You have no idea."

Woodyear said she never wears the rings during housework and routinely keeps them in a plastic container resting atop her refrigerator.

But because she is recovering from a March 3 surgery, Woodyear said, reaching for the rings atop the fridge was difficult, so she put them in a plastic container that was resting inside a coffee table. "I can't move around so well, so I adjusted my routine," she said.

The coffee table ended up being discarded Wednesday.

Olsen said the trucks had been on their way to dumps and recycling plants when he got a call "at the crack of dawn" Thursday from Woodyear's neighbor, Linda Santiago, 44.

Santiago, who lives in the apartment above Woodyear's, helped her friend hire the junk haulers. She had assumed the job went smoothly but worried when she heard Woodyear scurrying about her apartment throughout the night and into Thursday morning.

Woodyear was looking for the rings. "I thought maybe I had just misplaced them," she said.

When Santiago knocked on her friend's door Thursday morning, she found her "devastated and in tears." That's when she called Olsen.

Santiago and Olsen stayed in touch by phone as she went to work Thursday. By 2 p.m., the rings had been found. A few hours later, Olsen brought them to Woodyear.

Woodyear is not sure exactly how but said she will change how she cares for the rings.

"The only immediate change I'm going to make is that I'm going to keep them on my fingers for a while," she said.

With Mario Gonzalez and Matthew Chayes