Man pans Colorado rivers for months to make one-of-a-kind engagement ring

Fellas, we have a problem. Most of us show up to a proposal with a ring from the mall and a nervous smile. Jack Vulcani of Wheat Ridge showed up with a ring he made himself from gold he panned out of Colorado rivers, one tiny fleck at a time, over several months. Now everyone else’s proposal looks a little worse by comparison.

Vulcani already loved hunting for gold along Clear Creek. “The smallest gold you’ve ever seen, but it’s right there,” he told 9NEWS. All those hours by the water gave him plenty of time to think about how to propose to his longtime girlfriend, Joanne. “Eventually a thought just kind of popped in my head: what if I were to make the ring myself?” he said. He admitted the plan sounded a little crazy at first. “I was like, ‘this is going to take forever,’ and for some reason that got me going,” he joked.

Once he had enough gold, he took it to a jeweler, Zak, who had never worked with such pure gold before but agreed to try. He melted down the flecks and cast them into a ring. Then Vulcani took Joanne on a hike and showed her a video on his phone of himself panning in the river. “This is cute, but I don’t know why we’re doing this right now,” Joanne remembered thinking. Halfway through, she figured out she was watching her ring being made. “I just started crying. I black out a little bit, but it was a really special moment.”

She said yes, and the two are now married. There was even enough gold left over for Vulcani to have his own wedding band made. He swears he wasn’t trying to show anybody up. “I just wanted to make her day, not crush anybody else’s dreams,” he said. As for Joanne, “It just really reinforces that I’m with the right guy.” So if your significant other forwards you this article, we’re sorry. Clear Creek is open, and you’d better start panning.