NEW YORK — Sherri Bethelmy and her mother always began a night out on the town with the same conversation.

"She'd be wearing her pearls or the clasps or the bangles, and I'd tell her she looked beautiful, and she'd always say, 'Some day these will be yours,'" said Bethelmy, a 51-year-old Manhattan social worker. "And every time, I'd say, 'I'd rather have you than any jewelry.'"

But two years ago, Bethelmy's mother died suddenly of a heart attack. As her mother had so often promised, she left her only daughter the beloved jewelry collection, including diamond rings, a garnet bracelet and platinum watches.

But now Bethelmy's jewels — and the valuables of 1,100 others — may be buried in 5 World Trade Center, a building near where the Twin Towers once stood.

Bethelmy stored the jewels — appraised at $40,000 but worth to her "millions and millions" in sentimental value — in a safe deposit box in her local bank branch, Chase Manhattan, located in 5 World Trade Center. The bank says a 2,000-degree fire following the terrorist attack seriously damaged the vault and its contents.

When the bank informed its customers in early December that it was abandoning its recovery efforts because the site was dangerous and chances of finding valuables slim, irate box holders, including Bethelmy, filed a class action suit to compel the bank to excavate the boxes and compensate them for lost or destroyed items.

"When I got the letter [from Chase] I just had a meltdown," said Bethelmy. Her cousin had been killed in the World Trade Center attack, and Bethelmy was displaced from her apartment in Battery Park City for two months. "I just felt like it was ripping the scab off Sept. 11 and off my mother's death."

A Chase spokeswoman declined to comment on the suit, but in the wake of its filing, the bank hired an excavation company to try to locate the boxes. And this week, the bank announced that it had recovered more than half of the 1,100 missing deposit boxes and hopes to find the rest.

The boxes, caked in mud and disfigured from the intense heat, are currently being cleaned and tested for asbestos. Chase hopes to match them to their owners in the coming weeks, and pry them open — the locks are melted shut — in their owner's presence in the coming weeks. Chase, however, is not optimistic about the condition of items inside.

The handful of boxes pried open "were found to contain only ashes and melted residue," according to court papers filed this week.

The bank also pledged to set up a compensation program for customers whose boxes were not independently insured, although it pointed out that Chase had no obligation to do so since banks are not responsible for insuring the contents of the boxes and, in most cases, don't even know what they contain.

But David Wollmuth, the plaintiff's attorney in the class action suit, contends that the bank is responsible for reimbursing customers. 5 World Trade Center, the location of the boxes, was not hit by a plane and doused in jet fuel. The building, which is adjacent to the towers, succumbed to what Wollmuth calls "regular" fire which started after the buildings collapsed.

"It's no different than if a Chase bank in Omaha was damaged by a fire started by a careless smoker," he said. "The vault should have been able to sustain a fire."

Wollmuth said his clients are "thrilled" about the bank's actions since the filing of the suit and eager to view their boxes despite dire warnings from Chase.

Bethelmy, remembering her mother's rings, said, "Diamonds don't burn."