Wichita restaurant staff digs through bags of soggy trash to find customer’s wedding ring
Diane Kilts knows that restaurants are short on help these days and that many are struggling to keep up post pandemic.
So when she lost her 54-year-old wedding ring at Wichita’s Red Robin on a recent busy Saturday night, she assumed — tearfully — that she’d never see it again.
But Kilts, 75, said she was even more tearful when she was reunited with her ring, which her husband, Art, gave her in advance of their 1970 wedding — and that she was beyond surprised to learn that an assistant manager and a busser at the restaurant spent close to an hour digging through bags of soggy, sticky trash to find it.
“I am lucky,” Kilts said. “But I’m also lucky that there’s a community like we have here in Wichita. People still care, and that’s what’s so nice.”
The story started on Saturday, June 19, when Kilts and members of her quilting group went to see a movie then get dinner at Red Robin, 9990 E. 13th St. Kilts says she loves the juicy burgers at the restaurant, and she’s addicted to its french fries and fry sauce — a barbecue sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise mixture. (“The question is, do you eat the potatoes for the dip, or do you eat the dip for the potatoes?” she said.)
After the meal, her hands were messy, so Kilts — who uses a wheelchair — used a napkin and water from her drinking glass to clean them up rather than fighting her way to the restroom.
She was riding in her friend’s vehicle and was halfway home when she realized that her wedding ring — a gold band lined with jade inserts — was not on her finger.
“She said, ‘Oh no,’ really quietly from the back seat, and she was looking for her ring,” said Kilts’ friend, Vera Zahner. “She was just in tears, and she was wanting to get home and cry.”
When they got Kilts home, her friends helped call the restaurant and spoke to a manager. Another friend went back and searched the parking lot, in case the ring had fallen off her hand there.
But Kilts was pretty sure the ring must have fallen off when she was washing her hands. She didn’t want to tell her husband, who has a matching ring, what happened.
“How do you tell your husband you lost your wedding ring?” she said. “It’s not something you’re supposed to lose ever.”
The person who took the call at the restaurant was assistant manager Breck Roop, who’s been working for the Red Robin’s parent company since 2014. He’s worked as assistant manager at Wichita’s Red Robin for a year and a half.
He got a description of the ring and told the distraught caller he’d look for it. He and a busser, Miguel Garcia, went to the back of the restaurant and found that the trash for the evening was already in the restaurant’s trash compactor.
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They got the bags out and started digging through them, Roop said, pulling napkins apart and tossing aside the sticky remains of uneaten meals. They were on the fifth bag when Roop said he felt something hard. It was the ring.
It’s not the first time the staff has dug through the trash to find customers’ valuables, he said. They’ve helped reunite a couple of relieved teenagers with their retainers, and in the recent past, Roop said, he’s also sorted through trash bags for a beloved pocket knife and valuable coin.
It wasn’t a pleasant job, he admits, but one he was willing to do.
“I didn’t do it for any attention,” Roop said. “If my wife in the future happened to lose her ring, I would want them to do the same for me.”
Zahner retrieved the ring for her friend the next day, and the members of the quilting group were so happy and relieved, they decided to return to Red Robin for a celebratory lunch the following Tuesday. They gave the staff members who found the ring a thank-you card with a small cash reward for their trouble.
Kilts said that from now on, she’s leaving her ring at home when she goes out.
But the experience left her with a warm feeling about one of her favorite restaurants, which she’ll likely frequent even more often now, she said.
“They need all the pats on the back they can get,” she said. “You just don’t find people like that any more.”
This story was originally published June 28, 2021 at 6:01 AM.
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