Steve Van Ysseldyk went to extraordinary lengths after his wife, Jeanine Van Ysseldyk, realized she had accidentally thrown away her wedding rings with the household trash.
The couple, from British Columbia, Canada, told CTV that the shocking discovery came while they were out for dinner and Jeanine noticed her rings were missing.
After reviewing security footage from their yard, they pieced together what had happened: the rings had slipped off Jeanine’s fingers the night before while the two were cleaning up spilled popcorn after a movie outing.
Convinced the jewelry was gone with the garbage pickup, they traced it to Mission Sanitary Landfill in British Columbia.
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Determined not to give up, Steve set out early on Aug. 15 with gloves and a shovel. Speaking to the BBC, he explained how he persuaded landfill contractor Denny Webster to let him dig through the trash.
Webster, struck by Steve’s dedication, even pitched in—using an excavator to spread out the piles and speed up the search. “My brain was trying to figure out a way to tell him to go buy his wife new wedding rings,” Webster admitted to CTV.
Instead, Steve’s persistence paid off. After about an hour, he uncovered the rings, still intact—though, as Webster described, “all slimy with popcorn and butter.”
“I was pretty optimistic,” Steve told the BBC. “The wife’s gotta have her rings, right?”
Jeanine, however, had been doubtful. “She’s like, ‘They’re not gonna let you [into the landfill],’ and I was like, ‘You never know. You gotta try,’” he recalled. Speaking with CBC News, Steve admitted the odds had been “one in a gazillion.”
Weather conditions also worked in his favor. The mild temperatures and rain helped “keep the stink down,” he told the BBC.
In the end, Jeanine said her husband’s determination proved not only his persistence but his devotion. “He follows through,” she told CTV, adding that the unpleasant search was a true act of love: “I know how much he loves me, that he’s willing to go through a rotten, stinky compost pile.”
