A student at the University of Kansas School of Medicine campus in Salina feels fortunate to have her engagement ring back , though it is worse for wear, after losing it following a procedure she excitedly scrubbed in to help with.

Alexcis Barnes is currently a third year medical student at the KU Medical School Salina campus on North Santa.

Alexcis tells KSAL News back on July 26th, her second day of her pediatrics rotation, she was suddenly asked to help scrub in on a procedure. In her nervous excitement she forgot to safely secure her engagement ring. Halfway through scrubbing, a kind nurse helped put the ring in an upper pocket of her white coat.

After breaking for lunch, Alexcis crossed the street in the sweltering July heat, to where she had parked on Fifth Street, with her coat over her arm. When she returned from lunch she put her coat on and realized the ring and a card she had placed in the pocket were gone.

Once finished for the day Alexcis ran down to Fifth Street and began searching for her precious items. In rain water leftover from the night before near the curb, she found the card. She then spent several hours digging through the gutters in search of the ring, looking a little nuts. Friends and passersby offered help, condolences, and prayers to St. Anthony. The search for the ring was unsuccessful.

The next day Alexcis did more of the same, before work, during her lunch, and then again in the evening. After recreating her steps with dimes in the same pocket, she realized the ring was more likely to be in the middle of the street. After searching closely, she found the band to the ring without its diamond, where the dimes predicted it to be.

Encouraged by this, Alexcis kept searching and researching online people’s best tricks to find lost rings and stones. She was growing more devastated and more frustrated with each passing day, and with each passing car from the Leadsled car traffic on Fifth Street. Still looking a little crazy she would search at night by flashlight, and friends keeping watch for the next two nights.

Alexcis purchased a black light after learning that about 30% of diamonds fluoresce under blacklight. More rain kept her at bay the first night with the light, though.

Alexcis decided the next day was the last day she could look without “losing all of her marbles”.  That night her  fiancé Cooper Teschke was able to look with her. After 20 minutes, just before he was ready to call it a night, in a crack in the middle of the street he found the diamond with the black light.

Alexcis says she was “beyond ecstatic” and grateful to have found all the lost pieces. She is also grateful for all the help and encouragement from friends and strangers.

The band was not able to be reshaped and wearable. It’s being worked on by a local jeweler to line a new ring with its metal and hopefully even line Cooper’s wedding band later on as well.

Alexcis concludes that she has now learned better to wear a ring that can be left on at work!