Cranberry Woman Finds Fame After Flushing $10,000 Ring Down the Toilet

Usually Cranberry resident Kristen Kalis’s husband, Todd Kalis, a former Pittsburgh Steelers player, gets the attention. A hulking retired offensive linesman who also played for the Minnesota Vikings and Cincinnati Bengals, Todd Kalis still does public appearances through the NFL. 

But in the last few weeks, it’s his wife who has become something of a celebrity -- and all because she flushed her wedding ring down the toilet.

“I was just sick about it,” Kalis said.

To be fair, this wasn’t just any old wedding ring. It was a diamond-studded circlet worth about $10,000.

Despite accidentally flushing it, Kalis, with the help of a persistent plumber, was able to recover the ring -- a little goopy, mind you, but still intact.

“It’s a bad story gone good,” Kalis said.

It's also one people can’t get enough of.

Maybe because it happened on, or because Kalis had a one-in-a-million chance of getting the ring back, but her story has become an international sensation.

Since the ring was recovered a little more than a week ago, Kalis has been interviewed on local and national radio and television shows, including stories on CNN and in the New York Daily News. On Wednesday, Kalis was featured on the U.K. Daily Mail’s online site.

Friends continue to call or e-mail the Kalis family from as far away as Florida to tell them they unexpectedly caught the ring story on TV.

“It’s been unreal,” Kalis said of the response. “It was just a feel-good story.”

It all started at 4 a.m. on Valentine’s Day.

A new mom to a 6-week-old baby, Kalis – a mother of three – was up with little Jillian when she took her rings off her swollen fingers. Her wedding set consists of three rings; an engagement ring and two wedding bands.

One of the wedding bands dropped from Kalis’s loosened grip just as she flushed the toilet in the master bathroom. She immediately realized her mistake, but for a few seconds, all she could do was stare at the commode.

“I was telling myself, 'This didn’t just happen,’ ” she said. “I didn’t just flush my ring down the toilet. I was in disbelief.” 

Then she tore the bathroom apart.

With no knowledge of how indoor plumbing works, Kalis nevertheless grabbed some of her husband’s tools and soon had the toilet dismantled.

“When you think you have a $10,000 ring in the toilet, you learn real quick,” she said.

No ring.

At some point, her husband woke. When he learned his wife had flushed her $10,000 commitment to him down the drain, he remained calm and collected.

“She was visibly upset, so I basically didn’t want to add to it,” he said.

Frantic, she began calling plumbers. Each one told her the same thing -- that the ring was gone with no chance of getting it back.

But Kalis persisted in the belief that the ring was somewhere. And she didn’t care what it took to get it back.  She even called Cranberry’s sewer department in the hopes they could help her.

“I just could not accept it,” she said.

Then her savior, a plumber from the local Mr. Rooter office in Cranberry, arrived.

Although Steve Cirigliano doubted he could retrieve the ring, he ran a camera line throughout the home’s sewer line, according to the couple.

“The kid really tried,” Todd Kalis said. “He didn’t want us to spend the money. He tried to be honest with us that there was a very slim chance of getting it back.”

When the camera failed to produce the band, Cirigliano stuck a Shop-Vac in a sewer trap located just outside the house. Once he dumped the water from the machine, the ring popped out.

“The whole time he was doing this, I was talking to God,” Kalis said. “I told him, ‘If we find it, I will give you all the credit.’ God sent me Steve.”

Once the plumber came up with the ring, Kalis jumped for joy before hugging Cirigliano.

“I told him I loved him and that he was my best friend,” she said.

These days, she’s very careful not to have her rings near any toilets, or drains for that matter.

“I’m seriously paranoid about toilets,” she said. “Put it this way, it was a cheap lesson learned.”