Losing a parent is hard for any one. As adults, though, we understand that it is something we all will likely deal with.

But for a child, losing a parent is even harder. All the moments you should have been able to share with them are gone – the life you could have had with them forever changed.

So the memories you do have, you hold on to. For one girl, that memory was in the form of a ring.

Emily Dickerson had lost her father when she was just eight years old. The only memory she had left of him was her cremation ring.

This is what I have so my dad is with me all the time no matter what,” Dickerson said.

But during a recent trip to Iowa, she visited a beach. Dickerson had put the cremation ring, along with 3 others she wore, inside a lunch box. Somehow, when she went to look for it, she realized it was gone. It had been put in the trash by mistake.

“It kind of hit me, the realization, ‘oh my gosh, I misplaced these,’ I don’t know what I did, and then I realized where I had left them, and I was in a complete utter panic,” Dickerson said. “I ran to the bathroom and called my mom and told her this is the situation, I do not know what to do, I was in tears, I was a mess.”

Emily Dickerson along with her father, who died when she was just 8 years old. Photo courtesy of Dickerson.

Her mom, Tina Koch, called the Corpus Christi Parks and Recreation Department. The office was closed for the evening. So Koch left a voicemail.

“My daughter lost her father’s cremation ring at McGee Beach,” she said. “They’re now two hours away. She left it with her lunch.”

Can anyone help us?”

On Monday, when the office reopened, Laura Perez, the parks operations supervisor, heard Koch’s message.

She had been there on Friday, when the bus of more than 200 students had stopped at the beach. Perez even knew where they had thrown the lunch trash away.

At a dumpster on Coopers Alley. But the dumpsters, Perez knew, were already picked up just before she had heard the voicemail.

But Perez said that she thought of her own grandmother, who had just died, and knew that she had been in the same situation, she would have done anything to find the rings.

The rings that Dickerson lost at the beach. Photo courtesy of Dickerson

For three days, Perez and other city employees dug through the trash.

After the third day, Koch said she got a phone call.

“I am surprised (the city employee) even called me. I answered her questions, she wanted a description of the ring and then she told me she had it and I had no words. I instantly started crying.” Koch said.

Dickerson and her mom said it’s inspiring to still find hope in humanity.

“They didn’t really completely know the story behind the rings either,” Dickerson said. “They still went above and beyond to (find) that.”.

Koch said she believes the ring was meant to find its way back to her.

“It was like finding a needle in a hay sack, I am a true, anyone who believes in a higher power believes that Emily definitely had a guardian angel that day,” Koch said.

Watch below to see the miraculous story of how Emily got her ring back.

Sources: KRIS 6 News | Dallas News