Justin Choate, Author at The Ring Finders

This past week I received a call from Drew asking if I could help him to find his wife’s lost wedding band. After speaking a bit he said that it may be in a few feet of water as they had been swimming at the time, but it was several weeks ago and he believed the water may be lower (Texas summer and all). We also spoke about regulations of the park as he and I were both under the impression that there were certain restrictions regarding metal detecting. I called and emailed the park inquiring about the details as several parks in the Austin area do actually require you to apply for a permit with the requirement that you are searching for a lost item. Yesterday I heard back from the park and they let me know that they do have regulations and metal detecting is not allowed, however in this case they would allow me to search the area and I didn’t require any sort of permit. Luckily with this out of the way Drew, his family and I were able to meet out at the park. After a quick chat about how/when this happened I had a decent sized area to search with a pretty good guess of whereabouts the ring might be most of which was water free. After a good hour and a half of searching I still hadn’t found it, since the area was a pretty popular swimming hole I was fighting a good bit with the infamous « canslaw ». Luckily the ring was platinum so I knew that the sound was a bit different allowing me to dodge a good bit of the trash! Everyone had already finished swimming and made their way back up to the campsite for a break, that’s when I found it! Drew seemed to know right away, just as I found it he was already starting to stand up and make his way down to see. We were all so excited and happy to have found it!! After sharing a celebratory elbow bump, safety first, I headed out and let the happy family enjoy the rest of the day with a big weight lifted!

I received a text message this morning from a wonderful lady named Cindy asking about my services to see if I could help to find her husbands lost wedding band. In the afternoon after speaking with her and going over the details I headed out, a quick 30 min drive to the north and I arrived. We went over where the band could be and some more details about the ring, when it was lost, etc… I was very happy to hear that the band itself was actually silver, this made the work all that much easier! They believed that the ring was lost when the trash was being taken out to the front yard or while playing with their dog, so that’s where I began my search. I first started out with my smaller 5 inch coil and swept the entire front yard and then the back area where the trash cans were and wasn’t able to find much other than a few coins and of course the odd bit of trash. After sweeping around the trash area I decided I would swap out to the bigger stock dd 12″, dropped the sensitivity to two as to avoid the deeper items in the ground and in about 10 minutes I found it right on top of the ground directly in the path from the back yard to the front area where they put the trash bins! I was so excited I actually let out a holler, Cindy’s husband was outside with me just a few houses down walking his dog and he heard me yell. At that time we locked eyes I yelled I found it and hoisted the ring to the heavens in excitement!! We both did our own little celebrations and he got to break the good news to his wife. This was my first outing to help since I’ve signed up and it was 10x more exiting and rewarding than I thought it would ever be! Happy couple reunited with their ring! I can not wait to share more of the same joy and excitement with many more people to come!