SWINDON’S luckiest postie was yesterday reunited with the tip workers who found her diamond engagement ring.

Angie Phillips, who has been engaged to fiancée Andy Sikorski for two decades but never married, feared she’d lost the diamond ring forever after it slipped off her finger as she threw an electric iron in a skip.

She believes that the ring - bought two decades ago - slipped off her finger because the weather on the day of her tip visit was so cold.

Angie, 56, a Royal Mail postal worker, said: “When I dropped the iron over the side into the enormous skip below, my engagement ring fell off my finger. 

“I felt sick.”

She was overjoyed when two tip workers retrieved the priceless piece of jewellery within seconds and handed it over. 

Angie added: “I thanked them both, but that just doesn’t seem to be enough. I wish I could have done more.

“I must be the luckiest person in Swindon right now. I think I have used all my luck up for the whole year.

“The biggest piece of luck is that these two wonderful people actually bothered to look at all, even though they must have thought at first it would be hopeless. 

“Things could have easily turned out very differently and I could still be really sad and upset even now at losing my ring. But that didn’t happen and I still cannot get over how very lucky I am.”

Yesterday, postie Angie, who spends her mornings delivering letters around Ocotal Way, was reunited with the two tip workers who found her ring. 

Collectively, Dave Warren and Mark Williams have spent 21 years working at the Waterside Park tip on Cheney Manor Industrial Estate – the same length of time Angie has owned the ring.

Dave, 50, remembered the moment he was called over by Angie and colleague Mark to help look for the “small gold ring”. He said: “I had some idea of what I was looking for. Angie had told me what she’d dropped.”

He spotted the engagement ring resting on a metal tray, beside the electric iron Angie had thrown into the skip just moments before.

“It must have been your lucky day,” he told Park South woman Angie yesterday, when the Adver helped reunite the group 10 days after the postie’s visit to the tip.

Angie paid tribute to the two tip workers, who are employed by tip managers Public Power Solutions. 

She said of Dave: “He didn’t have any hesitation - just straight up the ladder to look in the skip.”

Dave and Mark’s boss yesterday praised the pair – saying she hadn’t found out about the engagement ring discovery until days later. 

Christabel Banks-Coffey, senior operations manager for Public Power Solution, said: “We’re really proud of the guys. It was just another day for them.”

Dave and Mark said that the ring was one of the more unusual items they had picked out of a skip.

“Normally, it’s customers’ car keys,” said Dave. “They open the boot, grab their rubbish and throw it straight over into the skip.”

The heavier car keys often sink to the bottom of the skips - making them impossible to retrieve. 

The engagement ring’s lightness could have been what saved its diamond from the rough.