The day started and ended like any other this spring for the Ermence family of Naperville's Tall Grass neighborhood. In the evening, Carrie Ermence took off her diamond wedding ring to put lotion on her hands.

Two days later, the ring was missing from its last resting place, and fear set in. Carrie and her husband, Mark, started retracing their steps and asking questions. That led them to their 6-year-old daughter, Taylor.

"Yeah, Mommy, I washed it for you," Taylor said, explaining she knew the ring had to be dried, and toilet paper seemed a fitting material to use.

Taylor's words panicked her father.

"Obviously, I started sweating and got dizzy and had to sit down," Mark Ermence said of the incident last month.

He realized he had mistaken the wedding ring wrapped in toilet paper for a used tissue. Rather than aiming for the garbage can, Ermence disposed of it in the toilet. 'ONE IN A MILLION SHOT'

Ermence started calling plumbers, who all gave him essentially the same thing: their condolences.

"I learned more about sewer systems than I ever wanted to know," he said.

Frank Selvaggi of Naperville's Wastewater Department explained there was a good chance the ring was no longer in the home. However, because the sewer mains in the Tall Grass area were to be cleaned the next day, perhaps something could be done.

"It was like a one in a million shot," recounted Mark Straughn, a Wastewater Department supervisor.

'IT'S A MIRACLE'

The next morning, two department workers, Jamie Antich and Tim Sloan, started running a hose into the main sewer line and rushing water through it to flush things back to where they were, Ermence explained.

It's not a pretty undertaking, he said. In an e-mail to friends, he described how "it would be a great candidate for that Discovery [Channel] show 'Dirty Jobs.' "

A few runs of the water and glances through a catch-all basket yielded nothing. Ermence said he could see in the eyes of Antich and Sloan that hope was fading fast -- until something miraculous happened.

Glittering in the middle of the sewer hole was the wedding ring, complete with a 1-carat marquee diamond and surrounding circle and baguette diamonds that Carrie Ermence had worn for the 14 years the couple have been married.

"All of us at the same time literally said, 'Holy crap,' " Ermence said. "It's a miracle. I hugged the two sewer guys, by the way."

Ermence said Taylor, who has turned 7, has learned "you can't touch things that aren't yours."

But it was his 9-year-old son, Jack, who helped keep Ermence's spirits up for the two days the ring was missing.

"He said, 'Dad, the one thing we can't lose is hope,' " Ermence said.

It's the kind of happy ending that doesn't always happen.

"It's very rare" that something like the ring is found, Straughn said, but a few times a year, the Wastewater Department does get similar calls.

THANKS FOR 'A THANKLESS JOB'

Mark Ermence can't express his gratitude enough.

"It's kind of a thankless job, right?" he said. "I was most grateful. I called Selvaggi and told him that, since it's kind of out of the scope of [their] job to look for wedding rings."

Now Antich and Sloan aren't just "city workers."

"[They're] my heroes, man," Ermence said.