Assistant dives into ocean to save Shay Mitchell's $33,000 bracelet

If not for the courage of a go-getter looking to make a good impression on his new boss, “Pretty Little Liars” star Shay Mitchell would have lost a very expensive piece of jewelry over the weekend.

The 29-year-old actress was modeling a Mr. Warburton brand bracelet for a waterfront shoot for La Palme Magazine

in Los Angeles when the pricey piece came loose and flew into the frigid ocean.

“Within a split-second, a $33,000 bracelet flew out as if it was in slow motion into the water at Marina del Rey,” says a stunned onlooker.

That onset source tells us that an assistant to the magazine’s creative director Derek Warburton, who’d also designed the bracelet, “stripped down and jumped into the icy and barely visible water” to retrieve the piece. The assistant had been on the job for exactly one week when this all went down..

We’re told that Mitchell and the rest of the crew cheered the fearless diver when he emerged with the piece perfectly intact.

“The assistant came to the surface with the bracelet and with no missing diamonds,” marveled our onlooker, saying the whole scene looked like it was “ripped from a TV series.”

We’re told that the bejeweled accessory was working its way toward the ocean floor, but was snatched up well before it got that far. When asked how deep the water was at that point, our source very sternly said “deep!” adding that even though the air temperature was 62 degrees, the water was considerably colder.

A second source said the hero, who’d “stripped down almost all his clothes,” was shivering and purple when he surfaced to grand applause from the grateful cast and crew. Once the piece was dried off, Mitchell strapped the bauble back onto her wrist and finished the shoot.

“To say it was an eventful shoot is an understatement,” according to that insider.

We’re also told that the $33,000 bracelet came off a second time during the shoot, but this time, it was on land.

Mitchell arrived in New York for Fashion Week on Sunday, dry, accessorized and ready to go.

With Brian Niemietz