A Christmas basket drive by firefighters in Kirkland led to a woman losing — and then recovering — a wedding ring she accidentally dropped into a collection bucket.
Montreal firefighers from Station 54 in Kirkland were out at the corner of St. Charles and Brunswick Blvds. on Monday afternoon, collecting money and canned goods for their annual Christmas basket drive.
From 2:30 p.m. until 4, they made their rounds, on the four corner of the street, and when they returned to the station with their collection pails to sort out the cash, they made an unusual discovery.
"When dumping the money out on the table, out came this ring," said firefighter Fred Fizet, who spoke with CJAD 800 through YourStory. "And it looked like a nice ring, it wasn't anything that came out of a candy machine."
The next morning, Fizet and his colleagues then posted news of the discovery to social media, sure that one of the people who gave money the day before may have lost it while putting their hand in the pail.
"We thought about it, we were at the end of our shift, so we came in this morning, and that's when we decided, 'we've got to do something," Fizet said.
At around 10:30 on Tuesday morning, a woman showed up at the fire hall, along with her husband.
"And you could see that she was somewhat upset," Fizet said. "She said, 'listen, were you guys working yesterday?' And right away, I kind of knew by the look on her face what was going on. And I said, 'as a matter of fact, we were.' And she said, 'did you happen to have found something?'"
They quickly discovered she was looking for her missing wedding ring, and sent her off with it in a matter of minutes — much to her relief.
Fizet says she had spent an unpleasant night, thinking she had lost her ring forever.
"She was quite overcome," Fizet said, "with tears of happiness! She thanked us, wished us all the best over the Christmas holidays and...thanked us profusely.
"We're glad that it ended up this way. Everybody's leaving quite happy."