I received a call from a fellow ringfinder in southern Maine, Dennis Boothbay, concerning a facebook post that he had read about a lost ring in Dexter, ME. He wondered if I would be interested in contacting the lady as Dexter is a lot closer to me than him. He sent me the posting and I contacted the lady. She was not aware of Ringfinders, however, was delighted that I offered to help. My wife and I were in our motorhome traveling home from a month in Florida. I told the lady, Karen, that I would be home Tuesday and would contact her to make a plan to meet. We made the plan to meet Wednesday at the first of two possible sites where she may have lost the ring.
She tells me that she was clearing the snow off her car after a work shift on Saturday and then made a second stop to clear the windshield wipers. AT the second site, she discovered that her ring was missing. Distressed at this, she made the post on Facebook.
The first site, her work place parking lot, was fairly small, probably 3 parking spaces near a corner of the building. The plowed area had a thin coating of ice and crusted snow. The snow bank [visible over her left shoulder in the photo], was small and pushed up against the corner of the building. Upon seeing this situation, i wondered if that pile was all the snow from this area, or if a lot of the snow had been draggged out and pushed elsewhere. At the start, i told Karen, that if I didn’t find the ring today, a second trip would be necessary when the temperatures were warmer and maybe the snow had melted. 16 degrees is a lot different than 80 and having just returned from Florida, I was not acclamated to the cold!
I covered the plowed areas and received lots of signals that were not in the gold ring range. I attempted to detect the banks, however, the proximity to the building presented a lot of false signals. I was to the point where i was thinking it might be time to move to the second location. I asked Karen if there was a possibility that the ring might be where my truck was parked. She thought it might be be given that she was aggressive with the brushing of the snow off her vehicle. I moved my truck out of the way and started detecting this area, which had more snow. Perhaps a vehicle had been parked there when the plowing had occured and therefore, all of the snow had not been removed. On the hard edge of the plowed snow in a clump of snow the size of a basketball, i got faint signal that was in the perfect range for gold on my detector. I stomped on the “basketball” flattening it out, and had a better signal, [still in the perfect range], in a clump now the size of a orange. I broke it open with my hand and had the ring!
My first thought was that Karen was one lucky lady. this ring had been plowed over, however, was in PERFECT condition. I turned around and asked Karen if she felt lucky today and placed the ring in her hand. The smiles that happen at this particular moment in a ring recovery are what makes this so rewarding!!
Thank you Dennis for the heads up on the Facebook post. 
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