Diamond Swallowing: It's a Problem

Diamonds? A girl’s best friend? Yeah. Tell that to Miriam, an 80-year-old Tampa woman so mortified by her recent run-in with the gemstone she would not even disclose her last name or show her face on camera in a local TV news story about her fate.

Turns out the woman swallowed a 1.03-carat diamond worth $5,000 at a fund-raising event for the Tampa Woman’s Club, which sold 400 glasses of champagne at $20 a pop. While most contained a faux diamond, one lucky flute contained a real one—which Miriam promptly, accidently swallowed, to her great embarrassment. But she assumed it was a fake one, and didn’t tell a soul.

“The small sip I took, I swallowed it, and I thought, Oh well, they will find it at the end,” she told ABC News. But when no one announced that they’d found the real diamond, Miriam had to confess.

As luck had it, she just so happened to have a routine colonoscopy scheduled for the following morning, and had the intact diamond mined by her doc.

“As soon as we saw it, we knew it was a real diamond,” Joy Pierson told ABC. She had donated the gem, along with Andrew Meyer, from their shop Continental Wholesale Diamonds. Meyer added, “We put it into a strainer and then we put it in the ultra sonic, Meyer said. “We cleaned it up that way, and we steamed it and then we felt safe touching it.”

That's more information than you probably think you need, but you never know. Diamonds have a way of going down real easy. Just ask anyone (or everyone) who's ever digested one.

•In 2009, a New Mexico man’s attempt at a clever marriage proposal was thwarted when his girlfriend unknowingly swallowed the diamond ring he had hidden in her Wendy’s Frosty. “I thought he was joking. I couldn't believe that I swallowed the ring. I kept waiting for him to get down and propose,” Kaitlin Whipple said on the “Today Show.” After seeing the ring in an x-ray, Whipple realized she'd just have to wait till the  thing, um, worked its way out before showing it off.

•Another botched proposal took place in China in 2008, when Wang Lu took a bite of cake Chen Lee offered her, and wound up swallowing the engagement ring he had hidden inside. “She was quite angry at first and said I was stupid,” Chen told Metro UK. Hey, it was an honest mistake.

•Dogs have even gotten in on the action: In New Mexico recently, a 10-month-old Basset Hound swallowed owner Rachelle Atkinson’s engagement ring that had gone missing in the house; it eventually came back to her. And in Scotland, Max, a 5-month-old Westie pup, gulped down a stranger’s diamond earring after jumping up to say hi and nibbling it right off her lobe. His, too, eventually reappeared.

•Jewelry thieves, apparently, have been employing the tactic for years. Earlier this month a New Hampshire man swallowed a $3,200 diamond ring when he was apprehended in the midst of a jewelry-store heist. In 2012, a Chinese tourist was arrested after an X-ray revealed he had swallowed a 1.5-carat diamond worth $13,600 that he’d allegedly stolen from a gem exhibit in Sri Lanka. That same year, a Utah woman was charged with swallowing a $4,000 diamond ring at a department store, then pawning it off after it passed through her system.

So, in case you haven’t noticed, diamond swallowing is officially a thing. And a problem. And places like the Ritz-Carlton Toyko, which serves diamonds in its $16,000 martinis, and Maine’s White Barn Inn, which just introduced a $40,000 cocktail with a ruby in its glass, should be forewarned.