GUILFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — For Guilford first grade teacher Hannah Makula, everything comes full circle. 

Her father, Greg, says his daughter grew up riding boats at the Guilford Yacht Club, and will be married at the clubhouse there next year.

It’s also where she lost her one carat diamond engagement ring on Wednesday, July 3.

Hannah Makula says her dad, sister and fiancé, whom she got engaged to in March, had just come back from the water and was admiring a friend’s newly-renovated lobster boat. 

“I turned around, I unclasped my hands and I just watched it fly out of my hands,” Hannah Makula said.

And down into the water it went.

“Hannah had said ‘Oh my God’ and I knew exactly what happened because I’m sort of an intuitive guy sometimes and I just had a feeling,” Greg Makula said. 

Greg Makula told his daughter not to panic. He didn’t want anyone jumping in after it to prevent the ring from accidentally getting pushed further into the water. Meanwhile, Hannah Makula says she was embarrassed and on edge. 

“We were just about to go to his parent’s house in Westerly [Rhode Island] and I was not about to go there and say ‘I lost the ring,'” Hannah Makula said. 

By 9:30 that night, the family says they were able to get a professional diver, Brian Green, from Waterford to come down to the club to try and search for the ring.

He was not able to find it. 

Over the next two days, divers from Guilford and Branford also participated in the search. They too, were unsuccessful. 

It was then that the family remembered their long-time friend, John Peters, had a passion for metal detecting since he was a child. A local plumber, Peters said he also uses the equipment at work. 

“As a little kid, on the beach I saw a guy doing it and I’m like, ‘Oh that looks pretty cool,'” Peters said. “When [Hannah Makula’s sister] called, she asked me if I had a metal detector that was waterproof. I said yes. She asked if she could borrow it.”

But Peters said it would take longer to explain to Hannah Makula’s sister how to use the devices than to just do it himself. Without hesitating, he came down to the yacht club along the West River on Friday evening. 

“[Greg Makula] sectioned it off and he said, ‘This is where I think it is,'” Peters said, adding he started with his bigger metal detector, but there was too much metal sensitivity and he couldn’t find anything.

Peters said he used a smaller device to pinpoint the location of the ring. 

“I dove in and held my breath for a little while at a time, stayed down there and just went through the bottom,” Peters said.

Peters said there was finally a glimmer of hope two inches below the riverbed. 

“When it went off, I thought we found a bottle cap or a ring. I picked it up and I was wiping it off and I could feel the diamond on it, so I came up and I looked at Greg and I said, ‘Here you go,'” Peters said.

Thanks to Peters and the community, the diamond is now back on Hannah Makula’s hand with a guard to stop it from falling off again. 

“He came to the rescue and within 11 minutes. He found the ring. Incredible,” Greg Makula said. “We were very upset, and for that ring to come up, for my daughter and Andrew [Callinan], I mean that’s pretty important. Money can buy new rings, but the ring is what’s most important and the love and the thought behind it.”

The couple says the whole ordeal is now an integral part of their love story, one they’ll surely be telling at their wedding next June.  

Hannah Makula said she’s “very lucky to be part of a family where people care so much about each other, and lucky to be apart of a community where everyone wants to help.”

When it comes to the ring, she tells NewsNation affiliate WTNH that she will “definitely be showing it off more.” 

“Worst case, we can always replace it” Callinan said. “It’s our love that’s the important part.”