Matt Pearce, left, Kira Bettinger, and Wyatt Goring, celebrate with Camra Bearnson, the discovery of two diamond rings she'd lost in the laundry.
A certified nurse midwife was recently delivered from a world of hurt and stress by two security officers and a crisis counselor who aggressively helped her search for two valuable diamond rings they thought might be buried in 5,800 pounds of laundry at Logan Regional Hospital.
Camra Bearnson, NP, who works in labor and delivery as a certified nurse midwife, says she was quickly preparing to assist with an emergency C-Section so she took off her wedding ring and her diamond-studded engagement ring and did something she usually doesn’t do—she put them both in her pocket. Some 24 hours later after the successful late-night delivery Camra was giving her own newborn baby a bath when she noticed for the first time she wasn’t wearing the rings.
One was her wedding ring with a two-carat diamond on it and the other was a diamond studded engagement ring that had been given to her by her mother-in-law. It was a family heirloom.
“I looked down and they were gone…off my finger,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ It was the worse feeling in the world.”
Carma Bearnson, NP, says she appreciates those who helped her search through dirty laundry to find the two valuable rings.
She called labor and delivery and they said the laundry bin where she had put her scrubs had been emptied. She called Central Laundry and found out that they pick up the laundry on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and it was Monday night.
She called Wyatt Goring, a security officer on duty that night. She says he was nice but warned her, “It’s going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. There’s so much laundry. I’ll show you.”
When she arrived Wyatt and another security officer, Matt Pearce, had already begun sorting through the laundry but she could then better understand the haystack comparison. The small room was packed and stacked with about 5,800 pounds of soiled laundry.
Matt says they decided to use some metal detector wands they have that can be used to check for weapons. That helped narrow the search a little but a number of the scrub tops had metal buttons on them which would often set off the detectors.
Kira Bettinger, a mental health specialist/therapist who works in ED to help with crisis situations, was also there and even though she was wearing a skirt and nice shoes, she was digging through the laundry too, Camra says.
“I didn't have any patients in the ED at the moment so I offered to come help look through bags,” Kira says. “I thought it was fun, like a treasure hunt.”
Camra’s husband Alex was there too, wearing gloves like the rest of them, searching for two diamond rings even though they didn’t even know if the rings were in the room. What none of them knew when they began the search was that the laundry had been picked up early Monday morning before the ring had made it downstairs. They were helping Camra, suspecting all their work would be in vain because the ring probably wasn’t there.
Carma's engagement ring and wedding ring went missing for a day. With the help of three friends she found them in 5,800 pounds of laundry in less than an hour.
They all had been searching pockets of green scrubs with orange labels that were in bags that triggered the metal detector for nearly an hour when it happened.
“I reached down into a pocket and I felt them,” Camra says. “I was crying tears of joy. I gave Wyatt the biggest hug after I found them.”
Matt says they were quick to help because, “We’re family here.”
“Somebody was in need and we had the time and ability to help them,” he says. “We’re willing to give our lives for the staff there at the hospital. They are just good people. The caregivers do their best to help other people and as security we want to do as much as we can from the backside to help.”
Wyatt says sometimes people get the wrong idea about people in security or law enforcement and why they go into that profession.
“Anytime we can be a public servant, and actually do something that’s positive, boy, we all try to jump on that as quick as we can, because it reflects what we really got into the job for,” he says. “I mean, we’re there to help people in whatever way we can. Not just to be there when things are going bad.”
Jarred Glover, security manager at Logan Hospital, says he’s proud of Matt and Wyatt for the way they responded.
“My team in security has many years of law enforcement experience, some of them well over twenty years of experience and they have a wealth of knowledge in many different topics,” he says. “The very essence of law enforcement, is to help someone in need. We often get asked for with things that nothing to do with safety or security of the hospital, this lost ring is a prime example. In security, I have always tried to instill the culture of ‘Always Together.’ We may not have the answer, but we can collaboratively work together and come up with a solution to a problem.”
Camra says she had recently been reading angry online exchanges about the vaccine and that kind of hostility coupled with the stress of working through the pandemic had taken its toll on her.
“It was such a tender mercy because, after this, I thought there are such good people in the world,” she says. “When you are at that point in your life…when you are desperate, and you just need someone, and then you get the help, it really lets you see there are good people out there. There was nothing in it for them but they helped anyway. At that point in my life, I really needed to know that there are still so many wonderful people out there.”