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Jul 19, 2008 11:00 pm US/Eastern

$20,000 Diamond Earrings Found In NYC Landfill

Jeweler Somehow Finds Her 3-Carat Gems At Fresh Kills

NEW YORK (AP) ― Diamonds in the rough? Try a $20,000 pair of the glinting gems in a reeking truckload of trash.

A Staten Island jeweler got her 3-carat diamond earrings back after she, her husband and city sanitation employees sorted through a heap of garbage.

"It's a miracle -- $20,000 earrings looking at you from the garbage," said their owner, Haya Sharon.

The studs, an anniversary gift from her husband, were in a small jar of cleaning solution. A worker at the couple's jewelry store accidentally threw it away Tuesday.

After store employees alerted the Sanitation Department, the earrings were recovered Thursday after a grimy search at the site of the former Fresh Kills landfill. The giant dump closed in 2001, and the earrings were in a load of trash destined to be compacted and shipped out of state.

Engagement rings and other precious possessions have been plucked from piles of city garbage in the past, Sanitation Department spokesman Keith Mellis said.