She lost her dad’s ashes. Strangers dug into 4 tons of trash to find them.

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Emily Dickerson’s most treasured possession is a ring her grandmother gave her, filled with her father’s ashes. She almost never takes it off. “It’s so important to me,” said Dickerson, 17, a rising senior at Lewis Central High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Her father died when she was 7. “That’s my way of having him with me.”

But one day earlier this month, she looked down at her left hand and realized her irreplaceable cremation ring was gone, probably for good.

Dickerson was nearing the end of a week-long trip to San Antonio with her school choir and band when she lost her ring. After performing in several locations, the roughly 200 students on the trip spent the day at McGee Beach in Corpus Christi on July 7. They were told to leave their belongings behind at the hotel or on the charter bus, which Dickerson did.

She forgot, however, to remove her four rings, including her father’s cremation ring, a sweet 16 ring, a promise ring from her boyfriend and a birthstone ring from her grandmother. Once she realized she was still wearing them, it was too late to go back on the bus.

“I was afraid they were going to fall off in the ocean,” said Dickerson, who sings in the chorus.

She hatched a backup plan — which she later came to deeply regret.

Each student was given a boxed lunch from Subway, so she decided to stash her rings in the box while she swam. Amid the rush to load everyone back on the bus, though, Dickerson forgot about her rings — which, along with the Subway box, ended up in the trash.

“There were so many of us that anything we did took quite a bit of time,” she said.

It wasn’t until the group stopped at a restaurant for dinner two hours later that Dickerson noticed her bare fingers. Her stomach went into knots.

“I was in a sheer panic,” said Dickerson, who sprinted to the bathroom to call her mother.

Dickerson was “bawling hysterically,” said her mother, Tina Koch. “It was heart-wrenching.”

Although Dickerson was devastated to have lost all four rings, she was most distraught about her silver-band cremation ring, given to her by her paternal grandmother when she was 10, a few years after her father died in 2013.

“It means so much to her. This is all she has of him,” said Koch, who reassured her daughter that accidents happen and that she would do everything she could to try to track down the rings.

It was a Friday evening, and Koch quickly called the Corpus Christi Parks and Recreation Department — which had just closed for the weekend. Koch left a desperate voice mail explaining her daughter’s predicament.

“I had no anticipation of anyone calling me back,” said Koch. “It was truly just hope.”

Laura Perez, the parks operation supervisor, listened to the voice mail first thing on Monday morning.

“You could hear the heartache about what had just happened to her daughter,” said Perez. “It was just a mom doing what moms do.”

While Perez always makes an effort to track down lost items when she gets calls from the public, she is especially adamant about trying to find sentimental trinkets and heirlooms that can’t be replaced. Her grandmother recently died, she said, and she could imagine how devastated she would be if it were her own cremation ring that was lost.

“I’m going to do my best to see if we can find this ring for this little girl,” she recalled thinking.

Still, Perez knew the chances were slim. By the time she heard Koch’s message, it was 8:30 a.m. The trash in the dumpster near the beach is usually picked up by 8 a.m.

Perez called the staff working at the section of beach where the group had been and was shocked when they told her the dumpster was still full.

“I’m on my way,” she told them.

When Perez arrived, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work. Two other city workers, Jesse Martinez and Robert Trevino, joined her.

The three of them jumped in, and for more than three hours, they sifted through about four tons of trash in a 40-yard dumpster. It contained three days’ worth of garbage that had been baking in the nearly 100-degree heat over the weekend.

“We went through every bag,” said Perez.

They sifted through sticky soda cans, remnants of half-eaten fast food, empty ice cream wrappers and twisted sunscreen bottles.

Hours into the search, they spotted a Subway box, then another. Soon they saw hundreds of them in a bag, and they knew they were close.

They began opening each individual box. Then, much to their relief, suddenly they hit pay dirt.

“It was in the last bag we went through,” Perez said, adding that when they finally found the ring, “I was so excited to let her know.”

Perez called Koch to deliver the good news, saying: “You won’t believe it.”

“Honestly, I had no words,” Koch said.

As the two chatted on the phone, Koch told Perez she was so happy she was able to find “the most important one.” Perez was puzzled, as she didn’t realize there was more than one missing ring.

Although Koch reassured Perez that the other rings were replaceable, she insisted on going back to find all of them.

“I won’t promise you anything, but I’m going to give it a whirl,” she said.

Since they had already pinpointed which bag contained the subway boxes, it took less than half an hour to locate Dickerson’s three remaining rings. Koch was doubly delighted — and stunned by the effort.

“We’re talking about four rings in a hot, nasty dumpster,” Koch said. “I’m blown away. I don’t have enough praise for these people.”

“It was astonishing,” she said. “I’m very grateful.”

The whole Parks and Recreation Department was thrilled about the extreme undertaking of their colleagues and the unlikely find.

“We all have those mementos or things that mean a lot to us,” said Robert Dodd, the department director. “I lost my dad four years ago, and I have some of his jewelry. I know how much that means to me, and I know how much it means to this young lady.”

Perez shipped the four rings to Dickerson’s home, and “I was so happy to get them back,” she said, noting that she will no longer travel with her rings in the future.

In addition to teaching her a valuable lesson about protecting her keepsakes, Dickerson said she was struck by the overwhelming kindness.

“There is good out there,” she said. “I’m going to remember this forever.”