A Fort Lauderdale woman went from devastation to elation after a group of TSA officers at Albany International Airport found a diamond that fell out of her engagement ring at a security checkpoint.
The incident began when Supervisory Transportation Security Officer Louetta "Rainy" Littman spotted a passenger crying at the back of the checkpoint earlier this month, TSA officials said.
The woman, Kana Chi-Murenbeeld, said she upset because her engagement ring was damaged and the pear-shaped diamond was lost. TSA officers continued to screen passengers as Littman and a few other officers began to search for the missing stone.
Officers searched bins, looked under machines and were on their hands and knees combing through the checkpoint before one of the officers looked in a bin that had a tissue in it.
"Nobody had looked in that bin yet, so I looked in and there it was," TSA officer Steven Kaminski said. "I just wanted to help her out. I know I would have been disappointed if I had lost a valuable item like that and nobody had helped me."
Chi-Murenbeeld hugged all of the officers and later sent a thank you note to TSA.
"I have never in my life been so panicked and upset in an airport, let alone anywhere else in public before," she wrote. "Somehow the prong of the stone in my engagement ring broke. The amazingly kind and caring supervisor on duty, Louetta Littman, was on top of the situation right away, having her team of officers scour the area as well as calm me down with her optimistic attitude."
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Chi-Murenbeeld, who has been married for three years, has been wearing the ring for four years.
"I have traveled all around the world and can say in all honesty that I have never met such an amazing team of workers in the airline or security industry," she wrote in the note.
