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The amount of terrible engagement ring stories out there are endless. Everyone knows someone that’s lost their engagement ring, whether it be losing it at the beach, having it simply fall off your finger, or throwing it in rage during a fight and never finding it again, we’ve all heard countless stories. Having said that, this one involving a diamond at an Alabama football game may be the most incredible ring story to date.
Alabama fan Gabriell Darby had the diamond fall out of her ring’s setting on Saturday while she was attending the Crimson Tide’s game against Texas A&M with her husband Wesley. It was a good day for the Darby’s as they got to watch Alabama roll over A&M, but then they got home to discover the diamond was gone from the ring.
For them, at this point, it’s completely unknown where or when she lost the diamond. Who knows, it could have been missing from the placement for days and she just now noticed it. But, on a whim, she called Alabama’s Game Day message center on Sunday thinking that someone could go look around their seats in the upper deck to see if there was a diamond.
Rick Karle of WVTM-13 details the rest of the story on Facebook:
“It’s this past Monday morning, and Victoria Giattina’s phone rings.
Really? So early?
It’s her Event Management boss, Red Leonard.
He has a job for Victoria.
He wants her to find a needle in a haystack.
A diamond in the midst of 102,000 seats.
High above the skyboxes.
Somewhere around section NN.
“Good luck”, says Red.
Victoria sighs.
The sun is up, and Victoria is, too.
She makes her way to the stadium and takes the elevator to the eighth floor.
She knows it’s a walk from there, but Victoria is fit.
It wasn’t too long ago that she attended Hewitt-Trussville High School.
It’s a new day for Gabriell and Wesley Darby, but the old pain is back.
Worry.
Sadness.
They wait.
Victoria Giattina decides to start from the bottom of section NN.
Certainly if the diamond fell out of the ring’s setting, it rolled downward.
Row after row.
Nothing.
Seat after seat.
Zilch.
“This is impossible”, she thinks.
“Finding a diamond at this place?”
Victoria shakes her head.
Twenty minutes have gone by.
Thirty.
Forty.
Frustration.
As Victoria is about to leave, a thought arrives:
“How about walking higher, behind row 29?”
“Ya never know!”
It’s getting toward mid-morning and Victoria is losing hope.
Oh, how she wanted to find the diamond.
She takes a deep breath and offers a final glance before giving up that hope.
Her eyes widen.
Her heart pounds.
There it sits, staring up at her.
It’s Monday morning and Gabriell’s phone rings.
The voice on the other end is Heaven sent.
“We found your ring”, says the voice.
Gabriell nearly falls to the floor.
Her diamond, her life, is back.
It’s this morning about 11 o’clock, and the voice on my cell phone is giddy.
Victoria Giattina is happy, giggly, excited.
She tells me how rewarding it feels to have found the diamond.
How happy she is for Gabriell and Wesley.
It’s today about noon, and the voice on my cell phone is cheerful.
Gabriell Darby is feeling happy and blessed.
She tells me how grateful she is to the folks at Bama for going to bat for her.
She tells me how thankful she is for her guardian angels.
She tells me how content she is knowing that there are good people in our world.”
Talk about unbelievable luck. You have to imagine that if Bryant-Denny Stadium was at full capacity there is no way the diamond would have been sitting there on the floor, but with seating restrictions, it increased the still unbelievably low odds that maybe the diamond could be found.
Most engagement rings only have one story behind them, the actual engagement, but for this couple, it’s now got two, the engagement story and nearly losing the diamond at an Alabama football game.