STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The drama over two lost rings started when Annadale resident Tiffany Otterbeck decided to make meatloaf for the family dinner on Monday evening.

During the prep, she removed her platinum wedding and engagement rings and -- somehow -- this busy mom of a 2-year-old and an 8-month-old tossed the jewelry in the household trash, something she did not realize until the next morning when she was at her job in New Jersey.

Here's how the story unfolded:

"I rarely make meatloaf," Otterback told SILive.com. "I washed my hands, took off both rings and put them on a wet paper towel.

"When I finished, I washed my hands again and dried them with a new paper towel.

"I like to clean up as I'm going along, so I put both paper towels in the empty package that the meat came in, and put them in the kitchen trash," she said.

Her husband of five years, Christopher, brought the trash to the outdoor cans for the regular Tuesday Department of Sanitation pick-up on their block.

It was not until Otterbeck was at work at her job in New Jersey on Tuesday morning that she realized what she had done and went into panic mode.

"I called my mom and told her to get the garbage right now because my wedding rings were in there," she said.

Her mother told her that was impossible because the Sanitation truck had just emptied the cans in front of the house.

Otterbeck was unable to dial 311 from her New Jersey location so she did the next best thing -- she Googled the city Department of Sanitation, looking for contact phone numbers to call.

Assistance from the agency was immediate, Otterbeck noted with appreciation.

DOS public affairs director Kathy Dawkins "gave me two Staten Island phone numbers to call, and I started crying as I gave them my information. I must have sounded frantic," Otterbeck said.

In less than a half-hour, she got a phone call from the DOS supervisor for her neighborhood, who quipped: "I hope that was a really good meatloaf!"

The supervisor told Otterbeck that the truck that serviced her house had already been pulled from its route and would be kept isolated. "He said they would call me back with a time and location" for the search for the rings.

By 11 a.m. Tuesday a time was set for the search operation:

"They told me to come at 6 p.m. (to the DOS facility near the Victory Boulevard exit of the West Shore Expressway) and I could go through the garbage," Otterbeck recalled. "They also told me to bring family members and old clothes."

THE SEARCH

Otterbeck went to the location with her husband and father-in-law, Harold Otterbeck, outfitted with painters' pants, rubber gloves and other protective gear.

"They took us to a big warehouse with the truck and a line of garbage," and the process began of trying to identify the specific bags of Otterbeck household trash.

"My husband found two of our little white bags, so we focused on that area and started in a new pile, looking for the style of the bags we used," Otterbeck explained.

"Everyone crowded around.A I took off my gloves and got on the floor -- I had to go through the garbage myself," she said.

She finally found the correct bag with her two paper-towel-wrapped rings inside.

"I put them right on my hand," as a cheer came from the assisting Sanitation workers: "She found it!"

"They really helped," Otterbeck said of the crew. "They just got right in there and helped me.A I couldn't believe it -- to find the rings in tons of garbage!"

DOS director of solid waste management, Tottenville resident Thomas Killeen, named the crew that helped out on Tuesday evening: