Jerry Van Buren, Author at The Ring Finders

 This was a joint venture by Jerry Van Buren and Donald O’Reilly to search for two very expensive diamond rings lost in the ocean. We teamed up for this find due to the limited time we had to search in the ocean and the remoteness on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico.

The following is a write-up sent to both of us after both rings were found and returned to the owner.

Thank you both so much again! We are still in shock that you found the rings! We cannot thank you enough!!

Below is our recounting of the story:

“My husband and I recently vacationed to Puerto Rico with some friends. While we were there, we ferried over to the island of Vieques and visited a rural beach called Playa La Chiva. While we were in about waist deep water tossing a football around, all of a sudden, to my horror, I realized that both my wedding band and engagement ring had slipped off my finger. We all frantically began searching everywhere where we were playing in the water. We searched for about two or three hours with a snorkel and trying to feel in the sand but couldn’t find it anywhere. Obviously it seemed pretty impossible, but we were just praying that we would miraculously find it, but had no luck. I was devastated. The ring was irreplaceable. My husband had made it custom with a diamond from his grandma. This put a damper on the rest of our trip, but what else could we do? We flew home the next day, very sad. However, the night we returned, God gave my husband the idea to look up how to find a lost ring and ringfinders.com came up. He contacted Jerry and Donald separately told him the story and asked if they could help. We soon found out they knew each other and were up for the challenge to search for my ring together. They were very responsive and extremely nice. They gave us hope that just maybe we would be able to find the ring. We provided them with pictures of where we were so they could know the area we lost it on the island. They went out of their way to take the ferry, rent a car in order to get to the beach because the taxis wouldn’t go on the backroads to Playa La Chiva. Within 30 minutes of searching we received a call from them that they found both my engagement ring and wedding band in waist deep water!! We were ecstatic!!! The next day I flew to Puerto Rico to retrieve the rings. They were so nice to drive to meet us and give us the rings. They are so so kind! I’m so grateful for their willingness to search and cannot believe they found my rings! This was nothing short of a miracle! Thank you Jerry and Donald for giving us hope when we had none and going out of your way to help complete strangers! You are incredible!”