Despite being out of work, architect Mark Epple of Minneapolis didn’t want anything for returning a 12-carat yellow-diamond ring that, according to an estimate by the heiress who owns it, is worth a couple of years’ worth of his former salary.
Epple said the best reward for the valuable find he made in a gutter at Eagle County Airport was the example it offered to his three kids about respecting others’ property.
“If you return something that belongs to somebody else, you shouldn’t expect to have rewards,” Epple said in a news release Tuesday from Eagle County, which owns the airport.
But Janis Wackenhut Ward, who lost the ring in February when she and her husband were returning to Miami from their vacation home at Cordillera, insisted the Epple family enjoy a free ski trip, and she stocked her home for their use. The family is staying there this week, the county said.
The value of the ring exceeded mere dollars to Ward. She received it on her 30th wedding anniversary.
“I travel all over the world. This is extraordinary. It never happens,” said Ward, the daughter of the late George Wackenhut, founder of the international security firm Wackenhut Corp.
The Denver Post
