LITTLETON, Colo. — Randi Olson knows it wasn’t the best decision she ever made.
“I just was really ‘smart’ and decided to put lotion on as I’m driving, and also take my ring off during that,” she said with sarcasm.
She placed the ring on her dashboard as she approached a red light. But when she hit the brakes, the ring slid forward and right into a vent.
“It fell in, and it was like ‘dink, dink, dink,’ into the farthest crevice of the car.”
Her fiancé was in the passenger seat. They looked at each other and realized – this wasn’t good.
First, Olson said they tried to fish the ring out themselves. They even bought a wire with a camera on the end. When that got stuck, too – Olson decided to call the professionals at her car dealership.
“She called me and she was kind of freaking out a little bit,” remembers Yvonne Dear at Empire Littleton Nissan. “We were looking at it and we found out, it was deeper than we thought.”
“Basically, the whole front end of the car, on the inside, came out. Steering wheel, dash, glove box, everything,” Dear said. “It was lodged in the heater box, so we had to do the deepest removal of everything. The middle center diamond was just poking up at the time like, ‘Hi! I’m right here!’”
“I was so excited I wanted to cry, because I thought I had lost it forever,” Olson said. “I was freaking out. We could maybe go and buy a new one but it wouldn’t be the same.”
Working at the dealership can sometimes be a thankless job. But Olson can’t say thank you, enough.
“They were honest, and they worked two days trying to get it for me,” she said.
Dear and her team are thrilled with the outcome, too.
“She's happy and I'm happy and this is awesome!”
