In a single week in April, Roto-Rooter outlets made two unusual and much appreciated rescues, according to Paul Abrams, public relations manager.
On April 22, Roto-Rooter plumber Gary Morford was called to the home of Margaret Clark of Anderson Township near Cincinnati, Ohio. After cleaning her 4-carat diamond ring, a 20th anniversary gift from her husband, she left the ring on the sink wrapped in tissue to dry.
When she returned later, she grabbed the tissue, ring and all, threw it into the toilet, and flushed it down. She instantly realized her mistake and panicked, thinking the ring was gone for good. Then she called Roto-Rooter.
Morford used a line camera to inspect her mainline. Within minutes, Clark spotted her ring on the video monitor, deep inside the pipe. Morford pinpointed the location of the ring. He had to break concrete in the basement floor to reach it, but he was able to recover it.
On April 26, a family called Roto-Rooter in Harrisburg, Pa., to help find their lost cat, Bud. The cat had gone missing four days earlier and was thought to be gone for good, until the family heard faint meows coming from a downspout vent on the side of the house.
Neighbors and a fire and rescue crew tried to locate the cat, to no avail. When Roto-Rooter Dave Jones arrived, he found that the home’s downspouts were routed underground and that the pipe extended about 200 feet into nearby woods. Jones fed a line camera into the pipe and found Bud stuck at a junction about 120 feet in.
With a little digging, Jones set Bud free. After four days in the pipe, he had lost some weight and was a little dehydrated, but he was soon doing well. An hour after the rescue, a thunderstorm dropped so much rain on the area that Bud surely would have drowned.
