CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, sunny and hot, perfect for boating. Danielle Campbell sat on the docks and started slathering her boys with sun block. She didn't want that goop on her diamond ring, so she took it off and laid it in her lap.

You know where this is going, right?

Later, she glanced at her hand. Her heart stopped. No ring! She realized immediately what she'd done.

"We looked everywhere," Tony Campbell said, "but we knew it was gone. When she got up, it fell through the cracks of the dock."

It was a big ring, just under 2 carats. She was devastated. "I burst into tears," she said.

They pulled out of their slip at Lou Wendell Marine and tried to enjoy their day on the river. Thoughts of the lost diamond hovered over them like a fog.

"We talked to a diver who hung around the docks," Tony said. "He told us finding that ring would be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

"With the current in the river, I never dreamed anyone could find it," Danielle said.

Tony manages Love Nissan. He was off on Memorial Day. On Tuesday, he returned to work. After the sales meeting, he ran into Mike Wendell at a gas station across the street and told him about the ring.

Wendell recommended Eric Gardner, a commercial diver.

Tony met with Gardner that evening at the docks.

Gardner had his work cut out for him. The water depth at the docks is 16 feet. "There's a lot of debris, scattered logs and twigs and brush, because it's close to the bank," Gardner said. "And there's two inches of silt lying in there.

"The visibility is nearly zero."

 But Gardner wasn't deterred. He had a plan.

"I went downstream about 15 feet and set up a pattern about 6-feet wide, just going back and forth."

A high intensity light helped penetrate the murkiness.

Above water, a dive tender, Ian Lafferty, monitored his movements and relayed instructions on a radio.

"I tried to figure out what the current had been doing for a couple of days," he said. "When I got to within 4-feet of where she dropped the ring, I went inch by inch, feathering my hand in the water, just looking for anything glaring."

Suddenly, he saw something, a glimmer between two rocks.

"I reached down to touch it. It was the band of a ring. I was excited."

He called Danielle and asked her to describe the ring to help him find it. "I didn't want to tell her yet," he said. "I had to verify that the ring was hers.

"She told me she was from Arkansas, that she knew if you lost something in the river, it was gone."

She was wrong. "After she described it, I said, 'I've already found the ring, so it's O.K.' "

The rescue mission took about an hour and a half, he said. "It just takes patience." Using commercial gear instead of scuba equipment gave him more "bottom time" for the search, he said, because an air compressor constantly fed him air.

Gardner spends most of his diving time searching for towboat props and boat wheels, occasionally even guns. Based at Amherst Madison, he cares for 38 towboats. If something goes wrong underwater, he dives in to fix it. If a boat sinks, he helps bring it up.

Always up for a challenge, he can't resist the occasional needle-in-a-haystack search. "I've found many a thing," he said, "eyeglasses, cellphones, pagers. This is the first ring I've had to look for."

Gardner didn't make any promises about the ring, Tony said. "He said not to get my hopes up. I told him it had real sentimental value, and he said he would give it 100 percent.

"I knew if we didn't try, we would never know," Tony said. "It would give me peace of mind just to have somebody look."

Friends warned the Campbells that any diver who found the ring might be tempted to pawn it. The idea never crossed Gardner's mind. "The Lord was watching me in the water," he said. "If I hadn't returned the ring, I would have been scared to dive the next day."

He gives much of the credit to his tender.

"Fifty percent of it is Ian's skills. He kept me in line from the top so I didn't go wider than I needed. He can tell where I am by the air bubbles."

After he found the ring, he took a picture on his camera phone. When Danielle saw the picture, she caught her breath. "It's just amazing," she said. "When I came to work with my ring on, everyone said, 'You've got to be kidding!' "

The ring survived the trauma unscathed except for a couple of easily mended scratches. Danielle learned a valuable lesson, of course. "I've got to be more careful," she said. "I'd rather have lotion on it than have it gone."

Tony sings the praises of the underwater hero who salvaged the diamond. "The diver was very professional," Tony said. "He didn't try to raise the price because he found it. He just put forth the effort. Without that effort, we wouldn't have the ring."

Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.