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Dani Jacobsen, a B.C. mother-of-two, is celebrating a “mini miracle.” She’s been reunited with a couple of her most precious belongings. They were flushed down the toilet of her Salmon Arm-area home more than two years ago by her then two-and-a-half-year-old.
The jewellery, which also included Jacobsen’s wedding band and a pair of diamond earrings, had been flushed while the family was living in the central B.C. town after her son Cohen, then two, found them on the side of the tub.
When his parents asked him if he knew where the jewellery was Cohen answered that he had “flushed mommy’s pretties.”
“We were sick about it. It made my stomach drop,” Jacobsen said.
Her husband, David, broke the toilet searching for the jewellery, crawled under the house to take the pipes apart below the toilet, and dug up the pipes leading to the septic system — all to no avail.
The next step was to deal directly with the waste-filled septic tank that measured 5×8-feet.
Jacob Starnyski, part-owner of Reliable Septic Services in Salmon Arm, was hired to carefully pump out the waste. When there was just a couple of feet of sludge left, David went inside the five-foot deep tank through the two-foot opening.
“He got suited up and went in and tried to get it done, God bless him,” said Starnyski, who stood on top of the tank working a modified suction hose that had a screen on the end.
But after a couple of hours it became obvious the jewellery couldn’t be found.
Three years after the flushing incident, the family decided to sell their Okanagan home. The septic tank needed to be pumped out, and so they called Starnyski at Reliable Septic to do the job.
“I do hundreds and hundreds of tanks a year …I do remember most of them, but this one really stuck in my heart,” said Starnyski.
He remembered the missing ring, and while he was cleaning decided to search for the jewelry one last time – and that’s when he found it.
“I didn’t even need a flashlight, it just showed up with the necklace wrapped around the ring,” he said. “And I was ecstatic.”
So were Jacobsen and her husband.
“I just thanked him over and over again,” she said. “I was so full of gratitude knowing he had taken the time to look again. I was very, very happy… he’s my hero.”
Cohen the flushing culprit is now five and has nearly outgrown the habit – but his two-year-old brother has picked it up.
“It must run in the family,” Jacobsen said, laughing. “We’ve learned our lesson: we don’t leave valuables around either of them anymore – especially in the bathroom.”
As for their “awesome” septic man, he’s just happy he could help out.
“You do good and good will come back to you,” Starnyski said.
Agencies/Canadajournal
