EAST LANSING – Tanya Urich remembers shaking what she thought was a stone out of her soggy glove while attending the Michigan State vs. University of Michigan game.
She and 75,000 others at Spartan Stadium were soaked by the rain that delayed the game Oct. 20.
Ironically, what she thought was a pesky pebble was a stone, but one of the high price-tag variety. It was a pear-shaped, 1-carat diamond that had come loose from her wedding ring.
Urich didn’t realize that the stone in her glove was actually her diamond until later. She was almost back to Grand Rapids with Dan, her husband of 28 years, at the wheel.
Suddenly, she saw the empty socket in her ring and had a kicked-in-the-stomach feeling. She flashed back to shaking out her wet glove a few hours earlier.
“I said to my husband. ‘I‘m sick. I think I just threw the diamond out,’” she recalled.
The frantic couple called MSU police and tried to contact the stadium. No luck. So Dan Urich reached out to Jim Robinson of Okemos, the recently retired Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan CEO who hosted them at the game.
'Slim to none' odds
Though he thought the odds of finding the stone were “about slim to none,” Robinson had a marketing contact, Paul Schager, an executive associate athletic director for external affairs. Robinson called him, hoping he could connect with someone at the stadium.
Instead, Schager and his daughter, armed with a flashlight and miner’s hat, went to the section where the Uriches sat hours earlier. But they soon called Robinson back with bad news. There was no sign of the jewel.
Schager then contacted Rick Atkinson, director of facilities and event management, who oversees the Sunday cleanups of the stadium, said Matt Larson, a spokesman for MSU athletics.
The next morning Atkinson “put the word out to his crew,” Larson said.
One of those helping with cleanup was Tyler Pasek, a graduate assistant in event management. Pasek said he and a half-dozen interns scoured the area. It was early morning and the trash hadn’t yet been cleaned up. Again, the search was futile.
But Pasek said they thought they were looking for a ring, not just a diamond.
After the trash was cleared, Pasek decided to take a final look. By this time, it was late morning and workers had been told they were looking for just a diamond, not the whole ring.
“I’m thinking this is a needle in a haystack. I’m thinking there’s just no way,” he said.
Still, Pasek broadened his search area a bit. He was three rows in front of where the Uriches sat in Row 50 when he spotted what looked like a dull pebble under the edge of a seat. When he turned it over, it sparkled.
Against all odds, he found the diamond, polished side down and tucked away from foot traffic.
The Uriches had spent part of their morning back at the stadium, too, picking through the trash in the area where they sat. They had finally given up and headed home.
About an hour after they left, they got the call that the crew had found the diamond.
“I could not believe they found it,” Tanya Urich said. “They went completely above and beyond.”
She said she wanted to tell her story because MSU has taken a lot of lumps over the past year.
Pat on the back
"Somebody needs to pat them on the back. They are getting a lot of bad press lately," she said.
Tanya Urich lost the diamond from her wedding ring at Spartan Stadium during the University of Michigan game. It's now in for repair in Grand Rapids. (Photo: Courtesy of Phillipe Medawar Fine Jewelers)
Besides losing the game to the Wolverines that day, Spartans were fined $10,000 by the Big Ten for violating a sportsmanship policy during that locked-arm pregame incident. And that follows a year of public criticism over the handling of disgraced sports medicine doctor, Larry Nassar, a sex offender in federal prison.
The ring is now at Tanya Urich's jeweler for repair. She said the prongs were bent, likely from pulling her glove off and on during the game. The couple is hoping to throw a luncheon for those who searched for the ring as a thank you.
Jim Robinson, the Uriches’ friend, summed up the jewel recovery best: "It’s the old Spartans Will. They found it."
Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.
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