Man Accidentally Donates Engagement Ring to Goodwill
A young couple's wedding plans suffered a setback when the groom-to-be found he had accidentally donated his girlfriend's engagement ring to Goodwill. Josh Miller, 31, had been hiding the ring in the pocket of an old winter coat for two months as he waited for the right moment to pop the question.
"She talked about the exact right (ring) that she wanted for a long time and we just finally, for once, found the perfect engagement ring and we were very excited," Miller told ABC News' Atlanta affiliate WSB-TV.
That excitement was short-lived however. Ready to propose, Miller dug through his closet for the ring, growing increasingly frantic as he realized it was nowhere to be found.
"I was just shaking," Miller said. "I didn't know what to do, or what to say, or how to feel. I called Cara immediately, but she thought I was joking."
Thinking back, Miller realized that coat, ring and all, was among the items he had put in a pile to donate to Goodwill earlier in the week.
"Honestly, I just think I forgot," he said. "I knew it was in my closet somewhere, but we were just grabbing stuff and I threw it in a pile and thought, 'I don't wear that anymore.'"
By the time Miller was able to get in contact with the Goodwill in his hometown of Buckhead, the coat, which had been put on the shelves earlier in the week couldn't be located.
Miller has not given up however, he is hoping that a Good Samaritan finds the ring, in his jacket, which he described as a black ski jacket with gray stripes, and return it to him. The ring is made up of a square princess-cut solitaire with smaller diamonds surrounding it in a white gold setting.
"That ring means more to me than anything I can explain," Miller told WSB.
In the meantime, the couple will proceed with their wedding plans; Miller is scheduled to fly to Akron, Ohio to ask his fiancee' Cara Epstein's father for her hand in marriage. Whether or not there will be a ring to be put on that hand remains to be seen.
"She's a school teacher and I'm a landscaper," he said. "We obviously don't make enough money to afford something like that on a regular basis. It was a very large purchase for us, and I just made a very bad mistake."
