Officer finds missing ice hiding in snow

Not a snow cone’s chance in hell.

That’s a cliché, sure. But is there a more apt way to describe the odds of finding a platinum and diamond engagement ring accidentally dropped out of a moving car?

In the middle of the night?

During the winter’s first blizzard?

That’s precisely the situation Gary Carter found himself in Friday at 1 a.m.

The poor man shuffled through the fast-piling snow in the middle of Thor, a well-traveled thoroughfare on Spokane’s South Hill. Carter aimed his flashlight beam downward, hoping to pick the sparkle of diamonds out of the dazzle of snowflakes.

“I’d given up,” says Carter, 64. “It was impossible.”

Just when he thought all hope was lost, along came Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy Jennifer Sutter.

After hearing Carter’s sad story, Sutter took pity on the man. Blizzard or no blizzard, nobody was losing an engagement ring on her watch.

“It was crazy,” says Sutter, who before joining the sheriff’s department five years ago was a starting point guard for Eastern Washington University women’s basketball team. “I don’t know why I found it, to tell you the truth.”

We’ll return to the ring recovery in a moment. First let’s flash back to a few hours earlier, when Carter dropped to one knee on a nightclub dance floor and asked his girlfriend Stacy Longsdorff…

“Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Longsdorff, 49, said yes. She slipped on the ring, which seemed a tad large. That detail was easily overlooked in this magical evening that included Carter singing his bride-to-be a karaoke rendition of “Could I Have This Dance?”

On the drive home, Longsdorff lit up a cigarette. She reached her hand out the open window to flick a bit of ash and off flew the beautiful ring.

Yet one more reason to not smoke.

Carter says he made a mental note of his ‘99 Lumina’s location at the point of separation and drove his distraught fiancée home. He returned to begin his frosty hunt.

The addition of Sutter’s help buoyed Carter’s spirits at first. But after 30 minutes he gave up. Carter thanked the deputy, handed her a business card and aimed his Popsicle toes for home.

Not to sound sexist, but when it comes to finding stuff there is a distinct difference between genders.

Guys suck at it.

Sutter is a case-hardened cop but … “I’m a girl,” she adds. “I could just imagine losing an $8,000 ring. I would have been crying.” In fact, Carter says the ring – with its three diamonds totaling 1.5 carats – has an appraised value of just over $7,500.

Sutter kept looking. She began to drag a foot up and down the street. And struck something that felt like a rock.

It was a rock all right.

She reached into the snow and pulled out the ring. She carried it to her car and called Carter’s cell phone.

Upon his return, Sutter tempered the man’s excitement with good and bad news.

True, she had found the ring. But the middle stone, the largest at .75 carats, was missing. The ring had apparently been the victim of a hit and run while on the street. The mashing loosened one of the prongs that held the center diamond.

Considering the circumstances, however, two-thirds of a ring was way more than Carter expected.

Carter once again thanked the deputy and drove off. Back in her car, Sutter caught a flicker of something sparkly on the floor.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she says. There was the missing diamond.

“It’s a miracle,” says Longsdorff. “It must be my destiny to have that ring.”

Carter and Longsdorff can’t say enough nice things about Sutter. And you know what? Every bit of praise is warranted.

Being a good cop isn’t always about catching crooks or writing traffic tickets. Sometimes it’s about being there for someone who needs a hand. On this snowy night on the South Hill, Deputy Sutter truly lived up to her calling as a public servant.

“She’s a fine lady, I’ll tell you that,” agrees Carter. “Spokane ought to be proud of her.”