Nuggets fans help find a missing mini diamond at Ball Arena after Tuesday’s game

DENVER — Nuggets fans gathered in a section of Denver’s Ball Arena after Tuesday’s game to help a woman find a diamond missing from her wedding ring — and against all odds, they found it.

Melody Campbell never expected that the diamond would be removed from her ring that evening.

“Faith in humanity restored,” she wrote on Facebook that evening. “I cannot 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 the middle of the field about 10 rows away as the Denver Nuggets started Game 1 against the Los Angeles Lakers.

“It was a great match,” said Campbell. “We were doing well.”

At one point, they were up 20 points. It was an exciting first half. But with less than a minute left in the game, the Lakers had nearly tied the score, trailing by just 3 points.

“I don’t remember who, but somebody got a three-pointer and I went bananas, and yelled, and jumped, and clapped,” Campbell said.

She remembers what happened next in slow motion – feeling something on her finger, seeing something fly through the air. I immediately knew what it was.

The diamond is on her ring, which she has worn for 25 years.

She said she fell to the ground and started looking for her.

She was like a needle in a haystack. The diamonds were small and the ground was covered in food wrappers and beer and rubbish were spilled.

“Crawling on a ballpark 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. She said family members of Nuggets players have also begun searching.

“They were there to see their kids and their parents play basketball, not to help a random lady,” Campbell said. “And that’s so cool.”

Soon, she had a group of a few dozen people walking slowly through the rows of seats, their heads bowed to look into every nook and cranny.

Tim Law was one of those people.

He was seated nearby, among the family of Nuggets players Aaron Gordon and Kentavius ​​Caldwell Pope.

After the match, he stood up and went to leave, but saw people who seemed to be looking for something on the floor. At first, someone said that people were looking for a gang, so Lu stopped by to help. Then he learned that it was just a diamond from a ring.

He said, “And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, we’re trying to find diamonds?'” “People are still everywhere, cans and food and wrappers on the floor. I will never find her.”

At that point, the plaza was empty and Lu saw no need to rush out the door only to get stuck in traffic. He decides to stay behind and help search for the diamonds.

After about 15 minutes, no one had found the diamond, so it was nowhere to be seen. Lau wondered if they should start rummaging through buckets of popcorn and nacho wrappers.

“I looked under one of the benches and told my wife who was standing in front of me, ‘I think I see her, but don’t say anything because I don’t want her to stoop and become a rock out of someone’s shoe or something.'”

He bent over, grabbed her, and showed his wife.

was a diamond.

They rushed to Campbell and gave it to her.

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“I didn’t think we’d find a fancy diamond in the middle of a square like this,” said Lau. “It could have gone anywhere. So it was kind of cool, finding him and bringing him back to her.”

Campbell said she didn’t believe it. In a photo she took once the diamond was back in her hand, the square behind her was empty.

You remember shaking the whole house engine. You didn’t sleep that night.

Campbell thanked the Nuggets and Nikola Jokic for fostering community on the team, which she said extended to the stands, neighborhoods, and around the rest of Denver.

“Just being a good fellow, being a good person, being a good human being,” Campbell said.

Campbell and Lou met Thursday morning and Campbell thanked him again for his help.

“The fact that we found her,” she said, “seemed like a really amazing omen.”