HUDSON, Fla. (WFLA) – To Mercedes Lopez, an 81-year-old grandmother from Hudson, her wedding ring is everything.

“My grandparents met in Arizona and they had that ring made in Arizona, the very place they met decades and decades ago,” said Brittany Galvin, Lopez’s granddaughter.

On Monday, Lopez and her husband, Ron Alward, narrowly escaped a fire in their Hudson home after flames jumped from another home to theirs on Driftwood Drive.

The couple only salvaged the clothes on their backs.

Once the flames were put out, Galvin and other family members set their sights on the rubble, setting up a system to go through the ashes.

Their goal: find the wedding ring.

“And we took shovel and shovel and put it on top. And ran our hands kind of like this over the dirt,” Galvin said of the process.

They sifted for minutes. Minutes turned to hours.

“And my aunt told me, as she drove back up, she was saying, praying please God, let Brittany have found it. It was the very last shovel before my husband and I gave up. The very last shovel,” Galvin said.

Later in the day, the family handed over the ring to Lopez. She was ecstatic.

The ring, a tiny piece of a devastating loss, has brought unexpected joy the couple.

“Oh my grandmother has not stopped crying. And my grandfather, it’s the opposite of shock,” Galvin explained. “It’s kind of like, this gives me goosebumps, your marriage will go through anything. You know?” she said.

The family has set up a GoFundMe account for the couple. The family of a victim burned in the other home has also set up an account.

Two other homes were damaged by the heat and flames.