Buried Wallet and Celphone.. Santa Monica, CA. .. Found with Metal Detector

Richard was visiting from New Mexico. He has to catch a return flight at 8am in the morning. All his identification, credit cards and money is in his wallet. He placed his wallet and his cell phone in a zip lock bag then buried them in the sand, placing his backpack on top of his secret hiding place.
.. Richard didn’t want to leave his wallet and cellphone in his backpack in case somebody stole his backpack. It was a good idea if he remembered to retrieve his buried valuables before picking up his backpack. He was a half mile away from the location when he realized that forgot dig up his plastic bag. and to top it off it was dark out on the beach.
Returning to his motel room he was able to use the internet to contact me. I started to recommend another detectorist but after hearing how important it was to him. I told him I would meet him at 9:45pm. He didn’t have a phone so connecting with him had might be difficult. Sometimes people find wallets and keys before we get to the location, but that’s not going stop me from trying to meet up with Richard.
Another concern was the general location was one block south of the Santa Monica pier. Hit hard by other detectorists, especially on a Sunday evening. The larger size of the item also makes it possible that somebody found it playing in the sand.
After arriving, I walked out to the lifeguard tower where Richard said it was buried. He was there to meet me. First thing he told me that he was actually at the next tower. It made it easy to get close to the area he buried the wallet because it was in front of the tower. Also it was only lost for 3 hours. Fifteen minutes of grid searching with my CTX 3030 gave me good signal most likely from the Celphone, it is possible to get a decent signal from the magnetic strip on the credit cards.
This find saved the day the day for Richard. It would have been a mess to try to catch his flight in the morning without identification, credit cards, money or a celphone. Richard was elated not knowing what to do, so he gave me a big man hug.. Not the first time for me, just another way to say thanks. Check out the real smile on Richard’s photo.
I’m glad I did not say, I was too busy to take the call. From the time I left the house till the time I returned home was 2 1/2 hours. It took longer to take the photos than it did to find his buried treasure.