Solid Gold Service

Technician works for an hour to fish a customer’s long-lost wedding ring from a clogged waste pipe

Quality service includes ensuring a customer’s marital bliss, as far as Allen Lewerer is concerned. The co-owner of Mr. Rooter Plumbing of St. Croix Valley, New Richmond, Wis., made television newscasts and newspaper headlines when he fished a customer’s long-lost wedding ring out of a clogged waste pipe earlier this year.

Lewerer, called to the home of Carey and Charlotte Moe for a slow-draining sewer pipe, cleared 60-feet of 4-inch cast iron pipe and flushed it out with a hose to make sure it was clean. Then, examining the job with his MyTana color camera with self-leveling head, Lewerer and Carey Moe noticed what the plumber thought was a scrap of copper pipe in the line.

Moe insisted it was the wedding ring that accidentally went down the kitchen sink about 12 years ago, but told Lewerer he didn’t have to take any extreme measures to retrieve it. The dedicated Lewerer, however, wasn’t going to stop until he fished the ring out of the line.

So Lewerer sent his MyTana M81 The Big Workhorse cable unit with a 3-inch pigtail retriever 32 feet into the pipe, carefully twirling it just in front of the camera. He hooked the ring with the pigtail bit and slowly pulled both units back toward the cleanout. He dropped the ring about halfway through the sewer pipe and had to snag it again. Then when he got to the vertical cleanout, he wedged the camera against the pigtail and lifted.

“I knew as soon as I lifted it, I would lose the ring,’’ he recalled. “So I pushed the camera against the pigtail retriever, lifting the camera and cable all up at once. I was going to try my darndest to get it out.’’

The ring rescue took about an hour, and resulted in a $20 tip for Lewerer’s efforts.

“He didn’t have to give me anything. The biggest reward is being able to help a homeowner like that,’’ Lewerer said. “Making the local newspaper and TV is nice, but my reward was seeing how happy he was getting the ring back.’’

So Lewerer returned the tip with a $50 gift certificate for a local restaurant so the Moes could celebrate getting the ring back.

“I thought it was appropriate to send them out to supper,’’ he said. “A lot of guys wouldn’t do a lot of things to retrieve the ring, but I thought it was the right thing to do.’’



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