A woman was reunited with her diamond engagement ring after a team of police divers scoured a HARBOUR to find it.
Nicola Hazell, 35, lost the glitzy ring when it fell into Bristol harbour during an early-morning rowing session two weeks ago.
She gave it to a friend to keep safe in her bag and once back on dry land she asked for it back – but it was nowhere to be found.
Desperate to get it back, she contacted the Harbour Master who agreed to help and enlisted the support of the local police dive team.
Officers from the Underwater Search Unit taking part in a training exercise in the harbour were set a challenge to find Nicola’s treasured ring.
And amazingly, one did.
The bride-to-be, who is marrying her partner Duncan Murdoch, 29, in two months’ time, said she is “so happy”.
Nicola, who got engaged to Duncan after he proposed during a surprise trip to the Isles of Scilly in October, said: “Losing it felt horrendous. I was absolutely devastated.
“It is such a classic, beautiful ring. I just had no idea where it had gone.
“I thought, ‘How am I ever going to get that back?’ We resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren’t going to find it.
“It was a horrible feeling to lose something so important.”
After losing the palladium diamond solitaire ring on July 9, Nicola and her pals spent hours trying to find it – but to no avail.
But her luck was in when the Harbour Master spied one of her desperate posts on social media – and agreed to get the police dive team to help.
Nicola met the divers at the harbour side on Friday and pointed to where she thought she had lost the ring – a section of water around 25m long and 5m across.
After telling her it was unlikely they would find something so small and light, the dive team got in their gear and started scouring the area.
After just 45 minutes underwater, PC Mike Loveless surfaced with the ring – which has ‘forever’ inscribed on the inside – in his hand.
Nicola, of Thornbury, Glos., said: “When they called up and said they had found it I cried. I was completely gobsmacked.
“It was just incredible. He rang me and said, ‘You need to come and ID a ring.’ And I just started crying.
“When I got it back I was shaking and looking at it. I will never take it rowing ever ever again – it will be left in a very very safe place.
“Because I hated not having anything on my finger, Duncan bought me an £8.99 ring from Argos.
“That has been immediately taken off.
“I’m beyond grateful to the divers. I just can’t believe that they did it. I will be forever indebted to them – it’s amazing.”
Nicola and Duncan, who is a project manager for the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, are getting married on September 23.
She said the divers will forever be her heroes in dry suits while Sergeant Nick Evans added: “Finding the ring equates to looking for a pin head in a football stadium.”
Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s PC Mike Loveless, who found the ring, said: “I wasn’t sure we would find it, but we did in the end.
“There are a lot of crustaceans growing on the bottom of the docks and the ring had dropped down in between them.
“I had actually swum over it already and on the way back I started to reach in to flick through – and there it was, at the bottom.
“I was very surprised and happy for the lady.”
