On a nice hot day in Seattle Joe went for a swim off his back yard dock into Lake Washington. As soon as he jumped into the water his dog followed. With one strong motion to tread water he noticed immediately his big gold University of Southern Carolina class ring went straight to the silty lake bottom below. Too deep, silty and milfoil everywhere he was devastated. So he made a Google search on how to find a lost ring in a lake and found the SeattleRingHunter. From this point forward the hunt was on. Watch the exciting conclusion to yet another lost ring recovery from Lake Washington, Mercer Island, WA.
On the 4th of July I got a call from Joe’s wife that her husband had lost his Tiffany & Co platinum wedding band in Lake Washington. Joe was standing in just a few inches water watching his young children play when he noticed his ring fall in to the shallow lake water. He kew the exact location and hunted around for about an hour but could not recover his ring. Watch the story unfold to another fun recovery with smiles.
See how Joe’s ring was recovered through the assistance of an expereinced medal detection recovery specialist:
Went on a random medal detection hunt and found an undamaged cell phone buried in the dry sands of Alki Beach, Seattle. See how the rest of the story unfolds at this video:
I received an email from a gentleman named Jake that his good friend’s wife had lost a family heirloom wedding ring in Lake Washington about five years prior at the Seattle Tennis Club. Many details were provided, special permissions were granted to search the specific area were the ring was thought to be however her ring was not recovered. Being that this is a very popular swimming area with limited access only to club members I was able to recover quite a few items. The most exciting recovery was a platinum wedding band that had an inscription of « Love Megan ».
As soon as I shared the news of the find with the Seattle Tennis Club’s manager he had his staff look up the clubs records for all the active Megan’s on file. Within minutes got a response from the couple that had lost this ring. About four years back her husband Gary had lost his ring after jumping off the high dive platform with his kids. He put a good hours work trying to recover his ring that day but the silt and milfoil got the best of him. He resolved to never seeing his wedding ring again and thought that was the end of the road. Naturally it was to his great surprise when he learned that I had found his wedding ring after all these years later. I was a very happy renuite Gary with his lost ring allowing its story to continue to live on.
See the story unfold and other items recovered here:
Got a distressed phone call Saturday afternoon from a man that said he got my number from a Tacoma dive shop and was hoping I could help him out of a jam! I then said exactly what did you loose and where? His response was that he lost his truck keys off the edge of the dock and that he and his family were stuck at Harmony Lakeside RV Park with no way to get home to Lake Stevens without his keys. I confirmed that he had exhausted his own efforts on trying to free dive for his keys but at sixteen feet under water, a bit cold and poor visibility he was unable to locate his keys. I agreed to provide a hand, put my dive gear in the car and took off to meet him at Mayfield Lake.
On my drive down I made a quick stop at the hardware store and found a large magnet and some rope. However the big box retailer doesn’t sell the really strong rare earth magnets because people use them to deactivate the anti-theft tags so all they has were some low strength ones available. After arriving on the dock I fussed around for a bit trying to magnet fish his keys back up to the surface but was unsuccessful. A quick dive was the only solution left so I suited up, and dove down, and recovered his ring of important keys. The most important key being that of his truck! Even though his key fob had been in the water for several hours fortunately it all survived an he was able to access his truck and start it up. His wife and kids were all very happy they were able to pickup camp and head home without any further delays.
Got a call from a previous encounter. Similar situation Jeff spends a lot of time on and around the water boating and enjoying water sports. Previously his Samsung Galaxy slipped into some shallow marine water and I recovered it for him over a year ago. This time same Lake WA, different marina and new iPhone 10 XS. The iPhone slipped and fell thirteen feet deep into the marina water. Few days later I came by to recover the phone. It would not power up after the recovery however the mission was to recover the phone so it could be turned in for his phone insurance.
Watch the underwater SCUBA recover of the sunken iPhone 10 SE unfold:
I received a call on a Saturday morning from a gentleman that was in need my help. He explained that just a few days prior on a Thursday he went to Alki beach with his wife and their young granddaughter. He made note that they started out playing on the Otter statues then went a very short distance to the beach logs. He said his wife was getting some food out of a bag and had a feeling about her wedding ring. When she looked down the ring was missing. They searched all their bags, over the log and the beach sand with no idea where it went.
I arrived at Alki beach that Saturday afternoon with limited time. Being in the area already I wanted to at least do a little detecting. I also was focused on taking some photos to see if they could identify the specific log they were sitting on to narrow my search efforts. The logs run down nearly the full length of the beach. When I arrived late afternoon there was plenty of people all over and throughout the logs enjoying a bright sunny Saturday. I took several photos and texted the couple but didn’t get any response so I continued to search in-between the groups of people and some obliged and allowed me to search the area they were sitting. In the back of my mind being that Alki is very close to my daily travels I had a plan B and that was to return when I had more time to hunt later into the evening or come back in the early morning before all the beach goers starting plopping down all over the log area. These logs are very popular seating areas and always provide a wonderful view of Elliot Bay with the Seattle city scape as a back drop. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to spend some time and rest in this beautiful place. As I was about to call my search, I gave it just a little more effort and so glad I did.
Watch this video so see how the whole story unfolds:
Lisa’s called me asking for assistance in fining her lost hearing aid at Alki Beach that she had just received just a few days prior. She explained that the wind had picked up a bit so she remembered placing her hoodie over her head and taking the hood off before departing and that is when she realized her left hearing aid was missing. Fortunately her new hearing aid technology came equipped with a feature to track her lost hearing aid from the application on her phone. Most likely this uses a BlueTooth technology and the app shows the signal strength of the Left and Right hearing aids respectively. She was able to confirm that the lost hearing aid was still somewhere at the beach however was not able to see it with a visual search. I agreed to assist her knowing that this app was confirming the lost hearing aid as still being on the beach so we had a very strong opportunity of a recovery.
She meet me at the beach and we reconfirmed the lost hearing aid was still in the area with her app. It actually showed the signal strength getting stronger as we got closer to the lost device. By using the tacking technology of the application and a handheld pinpointer medal detector we were able to unbury her lost haring aid. As with any other heavy item lost over a dry sandy beach the hearing aid was completely buried under the sand with only a small clear plastic bit sticking up at the surface. If only using the app and a visual search it would be very difficult to locate it. We were both very happy to have recovered this device undamaged.
If your are in the market for a pair of hearing aids or replacements seriously consider a model that supports a « Find my lost hearing aid » feature though a smart phone app! This technology has a lot of value in recovering these very expensive hearing aid devices.
Watch the recovery of the lost hearing aid from the sands of Alki Beach!
Maysoon called me having lost her platinum diamond wedding ring in the Seattle snow. After a church service she came out to help her husband add some fluid to their car before leaving. Her hands got a little messy so she bent down, grabbed some snow to rub her hands clean and then shook her hands dry. At this point she noticed her wedding ring was no longer on her finger! After a frantic search through the snow with no ring found she called me the next day after visiting TheRingFinders website. I agreed to meet her the next morning.
When I arrived early on Valentine’s Day morning the asphalt was super slippery and the piles of snow were thick blocks of ice. My detector easily sees metal through the snow however her ring was a thin band ladies platinum ring. As always I proceeded with the search cautiously and started cleaning out sections of the snow moving those closes to the metal railing further out as not to miss her ring. If it was there I would eventually find it. She told me that the parking spot she was standing on was full of snow that night the ring went missing. However the next day someone had cleared that spot and shoveled the snow into a pile leading up to a storm drain. The pile not far from the public sidewalk. I kew we had to get this ring before the snow melted as surely someone would drive over the top of it or eyeball it and no telling if it would get returned.
With several hours of searching I carefully scooped blocks of ice to the side clearing each one taking caution not to damage her ring. Half way through the snow pile I eventually got the signal I was lookin for. After a close inspection I was so happy for the lady that all of her diamonds were still fixed to the ring.
Watch how this Valentine’s Day search turned into another amazing recovery!
Seattle got a snow storm and I got a call from Omar. He and his wife had just spent some time in a coffee shop several bocks from their Issaquah Highlands residence. Earlier the area has received its first snow of the year with very cold tempetatures keeping the packed snow and ice around for quite some time. Omar retelling the story told me that his wife had slipped and fallen down on her hands and knees. In the process her gloves got cold, damp and snowy. So Omar took her gloves and shook them out to rid them of the excess snow and water. It wasn’t until they made it back home that his wife made the sad realization that her late grandmother’s gold ring was missing from her finger at witch point her heart simply sank. Omar told me that they recalled having the ring at the coffee shop so they were certain that the ring had to be somewhere along the path between the shop and their home. It made the most logical sense being that the ring was already loose fitting, with cold fingers and taking the gloves off that this is where the ring managed to easily slip away. Omar had tried to search a bit just by looking up and down the path before he quickly realized he was going to need some professional help in his quest to recover his wife’s precious ring. He was able to find The Ring Finders and my contact info after a quick internet search.
After our phone conversation having heard his story I agreed that we had a really good chance of recovering the ring and carefully headed out to his location. The challenging part that happens in quite a few of these searches is having the patients to work the the individual as they try their best to recall their memories of where exactly their item was thought to have gone missing. Being that Omar and his wife had not realized they lost the ring until they got home they did not have a super focused relocation of where exactly she fell at fist. There were several clues and that slow came to Omar’s memory as we walked the path a few times and after adding up all the little bits I started to fell a lot more confident we were searching the correct area. However at the same time the longer the search progressed Omar admitted afterwards to thinking that we might have to give up. Knowing how well medal detection works to recover lost ring I knew if we got in the correct location we would eventually recover the ring. Remembering that the ring was lost only a few hours earlier and the few people passing up and down this sidewalk were far more occupied on the freezing weather and the snow.
Watch this video to see the exciting conclusion of Grandma’s lost ring recovered from under the snow:
It’s worth sharing that from the time the ring was lost there had been no snow or rain fall. We believe Omar’s aggressive shaking action flung the ring down with a bit of force and the fact these rings have a substantial weight to them likely drove the ring into the fluffy snow just off the compacted sidewalk area. So it was no surprise to me when I detected the ring with my medal detector the ring was completely buried in the snow. No visual search would have fond this ring until the snow had completely melted!
I was very happy to have been a part of the recovery of this ring and in get it back home to Omar’s wife finger where it belongs! We hope this ring stays with them for a life time as they remember their grandmother often.
