A woman whose dreams died with her fiance on TWA Flight 800 is fighting to get her diamond engagement ring, which was found floating in the ocean after the crash.
"That ring is an incredible symbol of our love," Julie Stuart said as tears filled her blue eyes. "It will be something I will hold onto for the rest of my life."Stuart, 31, had lived in Bridgewater, Conn., with Andrew Krukar, 41, for the past year. They had planned to be married next summer.
In June, they bought a diamond ring with an antique setting for $15,000 at a neighborhood jewelry shop.
But Krukar wanted to place the ring on Stuart's finger in a special setting - Paris, the City of Love.
On July 17, Krukar, an engineer with Ingersoll Rand, boarded Flight 800 for a business meeting in Paris. Stuart, a human resource manager with the same company, was to meet him in Paris two days later.
Krukar, seated in the jet's business section, had tucked the diamond ring into his briefcase, inside a burgundy-colored box with gold piping and a gold clasp.
A day after the explosion killed all 230 on board, searchers recovered a ring box with a diamond inside floating in the water.
A week later, a friend of Krukar's in Paris looked at some photographs in Paris-Match magazine of items that had been recovered from the wreckage of the aircraft. The box, opened to show the ring, was among them.
The friend described the photograph to Stuart. She immediately called the jeweler who wrapped it for Krukar and asked him to describe the box.
"When the jeweler described it exactly, I knew it was Andy's ring," Stuart said. She has seen the picture herself since then, and has collected receipts, cancelled checks and the jeweler's description to support her claim.
But she has not been able to get the ring, tagged Item 26.
"I feel awfully frustrated and drained," said Stuart. "When you call all you get is a runaround."
"We have written letters to everyone imaginable including President Clinton, the attorney general, several congressmen, and everyone says I need someone else's approval," she said. "I just don't know where to turn."
An airline source familiar with Stuart's repeated requests, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Stuart needs to prove the item belonged to her fiance.
"The problem is that the property is not being released until it has been identified as belonging to a particular victim," the source said.