You Wrapped Up My Ring In What And Put It Where?

Please, someone buy this household a jewelry box:

Ron Goldstein found a diamond in the dump yesterday: His wife’s lost ring.

The Staten Island man, who accidentally tossed the 3.5-carat bauble in the trash, watched as sanitation workers poked through tons of garbage in the searing heat before recovering the ring he gave his wife 35 years ago.

“I was afraid to go home unless I found it,” said a relieved Goldstein.

The 63-year-old had tucked the ring in a napkin for safe keeping while his wife was in the hospital for a week before she returned home Sunday.

Somehow the napkin wound up in the garbage.

Yesterday morning, around 7 a.m., the Staten Island grandfather awoke in a sweat. The napkin was nowhere to be found.

He ran outside only to see a sanitation truck lumbering down the block and out of sight.

. . .

Heartbroken, he called the local Sanitation Department garage and an understanding supervisor arranged for Goldstein to follow the truck driven by Carlo Tanutco, 30, to a transfer station in Elizabeth, N.J.

“I put all my garbage in yellow ShopRite bags and those bags into a black garbage bag,” Goldstein told officials.

So the search began. Tanutco and fellow workers sorted through dozens of black garbage bags, piled more than 7 feet high.

The heat and smell was getting to him, Goldstein admitted, but he wasn’t leaving.

After just over an hour, some yellow bags suddenly appeared. Tanutco ripped them open, one by one, finally finding the napkin and in it, the diamond ring.

“He was a very happy man when he found the ring,” Tanutco said.

“It was meant to be found,” Goldstein recalled. “It was like God giving me another shot.”