DENVER — Nuggets fans gathered in a section of Denver's Ball Arena after Tuesday's game to help a woman find a missing diamond from her wedding ring — and against all odds, they found it.
Melody Campbell could never have expected that the diamond would become dislodged from her ring that evening.
"Faith in humanity restored," she wrote on Facebook that evening. "I can’t adequately express my gratitude, appreciation and love for these fans. Denver. YOU ROCK. Denver nuggets fans are the BEST!!!!!"
On Tuesday evening, she was sitting near mid-court about 10 rows up as the Denver Nuggets began Game 1 against the Los Angeles Lakers.
"The game was amazing," Campbell said. "We were doing so well."
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At one point, they were up by 20 points. It was an exciting first half. But with less than a minute left in the game, the Lakers had nearly evened the score, trailing by just three points.
"I don’t remember who, but somebody got a three-point shot and I went bananas, shouting, jumping, clapping," Campbell said.
She remembers what happened next in slow motion — the feeling of something on her finger, seeing something flying through the air. She immediately knew what it was.
The diamond on her ring, which she had worn for 25 years.
She said she dropped to the ground and started searching for it.
It was like a needle in a haystack. The diamond was tiny and the ground was covered in food wrappers, spilled beer and trash.
"Crawling on the ground of Ball Arena with all the beer and popcorn and nachos – disgusting," Campbell said. "It’s very sticky."
She caught the attention of other fans, many of whom stayed behind while the arena emptied to help Campbell search for the diamond. Family members of the Nuggets players also began looking, she said.
"They were there to see their kids and dads play basketball, not to help some random lady," Campbell said. "And that’s pretty cool."
Pretty soon, she had a group of a couple dozen people slowly walking the rows of seats, their heads bowed to look in every nook and cranny.
One of those people was Tim Law.
He was sitting nearby, between family of Nuggets players Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
After the game, he stood up and went to leave, but saw people who appeared to be searching for something on the ground. Initially, somebody said people were looking for ring, so Law stopped to help. Then he learned it was just a diamond from a ring.
"And I’m like, 'Oh my gosh, we’re trying to find a diamond?'" he said. "People are still everywhere, cans and food and wrappers all over the ground. Never going to find it."
At that point, the arena was emptying and Law didn't see any need to rush out the door only to get stuck in traffic. He decided to stay back and help look for the diamond.
After about 15 minutes, nobody had found the diamond, so it was not anywhere obvious. Law wondered if they'd have to start looking through popcorn buckets and nacho wrappers.
“I looked underneath one of the seats and I told my wife who was standing in front of me, 'I think I see it, but don’t say anything because I don’t want it to bend down and have it be a rock from somebody’s shoe or something,'" he said.
He bent down, grabbed it and showed his wife.
It was the diamond.
They rushed to Campbell and gave it to her.
"I didn’t think we’d ever find a fine diamond in the middle of an arena like that," Law said. "It could have gone anywhere. So it was kind of cool, kind of special to find it and give it back to her.”
Campbell said she couldn't believe it. In a photo she snapped once the diamond was back in hand, the arena behind her is empty.
She remembers shaking the entire drive home. She didn't sleep that night.
Campbell thanked the Nuggets and Nikola Jokic for promoting community in the team, which she said has extended out to the stands, neighborhoods and around the rest of Denver.
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"Just being a good teammate, a good person, a good human," Campbell said.
Campbell and Law met on Thursday morning and Campbell thanked him once again for his help.
"The fact that we found it, it felt like a really amazing omen," she said.
