California man proposes to girlfriend after finding engagement ring in Eaton Fire rubble
A true diamond in the rubble.
A California man shocked his girlfriend when he proposed to her on the spot after he found the engagement ring he thought he lost in the Los Angeles wildfires along with everything else he owned.
Brian McShea and Stephanie Raynor stopped by their now-burned-down home in Altadena Friday to see if they could recover any items that might’ve survived the flames from the Eaton Fire when McShea decided to scour for the ring, according to ABC 7 Los Angeles.
The couple fled their home on Jan. 7 before it was leveled by the Eaton Fire, which torched more than 140,000 acres in LA. The blaze was one in a series of fires across Los Angeles County that destroyed more than 16,000 structures and killed at least 28 people earlier this month.
McShea suggested to Raynor they sift through rubble around where his desk – in which he hid the ring in a drawer – would have been, but didn’t tell her why.
“I was thinking, ‘Well, maybe the stone can survive and maybe we’ll find the little stone.’ I thought the ring was going to completely disintegrate,” he told the station.
Still, McShea went looking for a shiny object.
“So we’re digging around where my desk is, again just looking for a stone — man, I really didn’t have a lot of hope,” he told the local outlet. “But you just brush away some rubble and there’s a little ring, and you pick that up and it’s actually a washer to something, and that happened like four times, and then you pick it up, and there’s a little diamond.”
McShea — who, before the fire, had plans to propose in the near future — couldn’t wait and popped the question right where their house once stood.
“And I was on my knees and I was like, ‘Hey, will you marry me?’” he said. “And I’m in complete PPE, zipped up with the white hood and everything.”
“And I’m crying,” Raynor added.
The couple doesn’t have a wedding date yet but wants to remain in the area and rebuild.
“We’re really hoping that Los Angeles can support Altadena in its rebuild effort for the next couple years and we’re able to return because this community is just so special,” McShea told ABC 7 LA.
