Florida Friday has been on hiatus for the past two weeks for a big meth cook (Florida sabbatical, we call it), but today it’s back and not a moment too soon, because an 80-year-old woman accidentally swallowed a $5,000 diamond at a charity event in Tampa. And now we go to the block quote to play my favorite Florida game, How Did This Happen?
The idea behind the Tampa Women’s Club charity event was simple. For $20, you could buy a flute of champagne and a chance to win a one-carat, $5,000 diamond.
Organizers of the Saturday event placed $10 cubic zirconia stones in the bottom of 399 of the 400 champagne glasses. The prized diamond, donated by Continental Wholesale Diamonds, was placed in the last.
The problem? Eighty-year-old Miriam Tucker accidentally swallowed it.
They don’t specify, but I doubt that one diamond in 400 glasses was the only one that got swallowed. I have to imagine there were at least 200 other drunk senior citizens with diamond-shaped glass in their stomachs not considered noteworthy enough for a mention in Florida.
Tucker told local news media that she didn’t want to put her finger in the champagne, so she drank a bit. While laughing with women at the table, she realized she swallowed it.
I like to think Florida police reports just have a series of likely possibilities, and the cops there are sort of like McDonald’s workers, where they just have to circle the one the best describes the predicament. So for this, after you get past “Old woman swallowed expensive diamond,” under “how,” you skip over “she was trying to win a pet snake,” “she was hiding it from a genital-biting prostitute,” and “sharks,” and you’d circle “charity auction gone wrong.”
Embarrassed, she had to tell jewelers who were frantically searching for the winner.
“Doc, I swear to God, it was a one-in-400 chance!”
Already scheduled for a colonoscopy on Monday, she had a doctor recover the jewel. [FoxNews]
I just love a news story that includes the phrase “already scheduled for a colonoscopy.” God I hope the colon doctor went in there with a jeweler’s loupe. “Yep, it’s a real diamond all right.”
One time my grandma swallowed some sand, and a few weeks later her colon doctor found a pearl.
[pics via Shutterstock]