Here's one of those silly little stories that act as a reminder how different your life is from the average NFL superstar.
Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones hopped on a jet ski this week, zipping around Lake Lanier in Georgia. Good, clean fun, right? But fortunes changed when the All-Pro encountered a boat wake that knocked him off his vessel. He popped to the surface unharmed but not whole.
Jones' diamond stud earring had detached from his lobe during his fall, sinking to the bottom of the murky, 65-foot-deep lake. Oof. The earring's value was in the neighborhood of $100,000.
"Yeah, it was worth a little bit," Jones allowed in conversation with WXIA-TVÂ in Atlanta.
So Jones did what any multi-millionaire with expensive bling taste would do: He hired a team of divers to recover the tiny treasure. Bobby Griffin, the self-proclaimed Scubaman of Lake Lanier (awesome) and salvage diver Richard Pickering went to work on Tuesday but had no luck. They don't sound incredibly hopeful that will change.
"It's down in crevasses and nooks and crannies," Pickering explained. "It's impossible -- absolutely impossible."
Incredibly, this is only the second-most tragic jewelry-related loss for Jones this year. Godspeed, Scubaman and Salvageman.
UPDATE: Since the publishing of this article, Julio Jonestold reporters, per ESPN, he has insurance on the piece of jewelry lost while on the lake, and did not hire a search team.
