Paul Humphreys, Author at The Ring Finders | Page 10 of 12

Wisconsin’s, Whistling Straits Golf Course on the picturesque shores of Lake Michigan, was host to the 2015 PGA Championship. But it became the unintended host to Joey Piatek’s wedding ring on April 29, 2017.

As was his habit, Joey removed his ring before playing, slipping it into a zipped pocket on his golf bag for safekeeping. He realized it was missing as he was leaving the course. Where could it have gone? Joey’s heart sank when he remembered his caddie, on two occasions, turning the bag upside down to retrieve the cover for his putter after it had fallen inside. Had the ring fallen out then?

Joey immediately returned to the course from the parking lot and searched using his iPhone flashlight in the dark. To make matters worse, it began raining. His efforts were unsuccessful. He tried looking again the next morning but again, the ring seemed to have vanished.

Joey’s bride of a year and half, Michelle, was in New York attending the wedding shower of a friend when she received the news. Being a nurse anesthetist, she immediately went into problem-solving mode—perhaps Joey could rent a metal detector. A quick search on the Internet brought up The Ring Finders directory of metal detecting specialists. It peaked her interest; she never realized such a service existed. It gave a glimmer of hope! And so Michelle encouraged Joey to contact me.

I received Joey’s email and made arrangements to conduct the search the following morning. Since Joey lived in Chicago, Illinois, I had him text me a Google earth satellite map of the golf course showing pins at the two locations where the golf bag had been turned upside down. Technology is wonderful!

Unfortunately, a thorough search of the two marked areas failed to turn up the ring–perhaps someone had already found it. My 40-plus years experience however, prompted me to widen the search area. Sure enough, on the gravel pathway leading up to the 10th Hole, I heard a familiar tone in my headset. The conductivity numbers showing on my XP Deus control screen were consistent with 14 Karat gold. It was Joey’s ring!

Barely visible with the naked eye, the love token was pretty much buried. It had been stepped on or run over by a club car but was not worse for wear considering. I took a photo to show it peaking out from among the pebbles as if embarrassed by the ordeal. Can you spot it?

Joey and Michelle drove up from Chicago a week later. It was such a joy to return the ring in person and to visit with this delightful couple. It seems they have been telling all their friends and family members about their experience with The Ring Finders and with my services here in southwest Wisconsin. Thank you both for the privilege of helping to recover your ring and for your kind reward.

Joey, may your ring’s happy-ending story continue for many, many years to come!

This lost-and-now-found wedding band will go down in my book of smiles as ‘The Valentine’s Ring.’

I say this because, the ring’s owner, Todd, became engaged to Suzie on a very happy Valentine’s Day in 2010. Subsequently, exactly seven years later, on Valentine’s Day, 2017, Todd’s love-token emerged from the icy darkness of a Wisconsin snow pile. It was as though the ring was most anxious to celebrate the warmth and glow of the occasion all over again. But I’m getting ahead of my story.

Two months earlier, the ring vanished from Todd’s finger as he was clearing the snow off his car. Together the couple shoveled a wide area around their vehicle. They even set the shoveled snow to one side and sifted through it by hand. It was a race to find it before the inevitable snowplow arrived.

Questions ricocheted in their minds. Had the ring fallen off their vehicle as they drove away? Had a passerby picked it up? Or had the snowplow already done its nasty deed? Or was the ring already cocooned inside the ten to twelve foot high mound of snow at the end of the parking lot? These unanswered questions only served to deepen the sick feeling in Todd and Suzie’s stomachs, the kind that accompanies the loss of something personal—precious.

Having found my name on The Ring Finders website, Todd reached out to me a few days later. Would I be willing to search for his ring? The cold was especially brutal that evening as I applied my 40-plus years of metal detecting experience to the task at hand. But it was to no avail. The only remaining hope was that maybe, just maybe the ring was somewhere in the gigantic snow pile. If so, it would have to wait until spring thaw.

In the weeks to follow I kept an eye on similar snow mounds where I live. As they slowly melted I returned at intervals to check the one where Todd’s ring had been lost. But as I climbed over the pile with my detector, all was quiet in my headset, ominously quiet. “Ring,” I asked out loud, “where are you hiding?”

The morning sun shone warm and promising on Valentine’s Day. I noticed a trickle of water leaking out from beneath a snow pile not far from my house and knew it was time to take another drive. As I pulled my vehicle up to the now-much-smaller mound, a pair of Canada geese stood guard. They took turns honking their displeasure at my disturbing their morning solace.

Keeping a wary eye on the unpredictable duo, I traced my way around the retreating perimeter scanning for any sign of a wedding band. Then a glimmer caught my eye! And now, as Paul Harvey, American radio broadcaster for ABC Radio Networks used to say, “You know the rest of the story.”

Suzie stopped by to pick up Todd’s ring just a few hours ago. As it turns out, Todd was traveling on Valentine’s Day. And so Suzie is looking forward to surprising him with a most-special Valentine’s gift—-again!

The text message from Mequon, Wisconsin, resident Adam Korte, read in part, “Lost my ring in my yard. Looked myself with a cheap metal detector with no luck. Wondering if you would be interested in taking a crack at it?”

Within a few hours I arrived on location and received a first-hand chronology of the events leading up to Adam’s loss. Winterizing his family’s swimming pool Adam flipped the water off his hands in the chill weather. As he did so, he felt his wedding band leave his finger, glancing off his fingernail as it left. Then it just disappeared.

Adam and his 9-year-old son spent the better part of a week searching the area without success. They even tried using a metal detector but the machine set up such a howl it proved frustrating; the ground acted like it was full of metal.

A systematic grid search with my XP Deus metal detector did not reveal the ring’s whereabouts. But there was clearly a large metallic object buried in the frozen ground in the vicinity where the ring disappeared, what we metal-detecting specialists fondly call, “a big and ugly.” It could have been a metal culvert or an old car engine. Whatever it was, my detector coil was picking it up even at waist high. It is situations like this that new metal-detecting technology really shines. I was able to reduce the sensitivity and make adjustments that allowed me to isolate signals in the very narrow range of Adam’s 14K white gold ring. Soon a distinct signal could be heard amidst all the noise. Brushing away the top bits of soil and leaves a razor thin, shiny, circle appeared—it was the ring!

So glad for the opportunity to help recover your wedding band, Adam! Now Santa won’t have to bring a new one for Christmas!

Newly-married, Germantown resident, Gary Tanker, finished cutting his grass and was washing up at his kitchen sink when he realized his tantalum wedding band was missing! Wikipedia describes tantalum as “a rare, hard, blue-gray, lustrous transition metal that is highly corrosion-resistant.” Only very recently has this metal been used for making jewelry. Despite my nearly 40+ years experience, this was my first search for a ring made from this rare metal; I was unsure just where on the conductivity scale my XP Deus detector would register tantalum. In addition, Gary’s home sat on a half-acre lot—where would we begin?

Gary had spent every spare moment on his knees combing through the grass and leaves. He even used a simple metal detector acquired and used as a child—all without success; the ground, to his dismay, was full of metal! It was then he discovered The Ring Finders Internet directory of metal-detecting specialists and reached out to me. I was out of the country at the time but we arranged to meet soon after my arrival home.

When I finally pulled up at the Tanker residence, the sun had fully set. Temperatures were plummeting and strong winter-like winds bit through our clothes. With flashlights in hand we began a systematic search. Metal detecting, in its simplest form is a process of eliminating where the lost item is not. And in the case of a wedding ring, this involves eliminating one square inch at a time.

After nearly two hours we moved our search to the rear of the house where I remembered Gary explaining how he had brushed aside low branches of an apple tree while operating his lawn tractor. It made sense to first check out where those branches may have caught his ring. It was the right decision. Within moments a pronounced signal in the high sliver range registered on my detector. The clear outline of Gary’s ring became visible after sweeping away some grass and leaves. I gave Gary the thrill of extracting his ring from where it lay pressed deeply into the ground.

So glad for the opportunity to help recover your tantalum ring, Gary!

Nicholus Hockers felt the heavy platinum ring leave his finger as he swam to his family’s boat dock on a warm summer evening on Silver Lake, Wisconsin. His heart sank to the muddy depths along with the cherished token. He had only received it from his bride a few weeks before. Now it was gone. How could he face her with such news!

I received phone call from Nicholus a few days later on August 26, 2016. He discovered The Ring Finders website and saw my name listed as a metal-detecting specialist in the area. Could I perform a search for his ring?

Most Wisconsin lakes are shallow but have a pudding like bottom into which objects disappear, never to see the light of day again. But Nicholus’s description gave me confidence that he knew quite precisely where the ring had left his finger. It was a long-shot but worth a try.

My wife, Kathleen, and I arrived at Silver Lake late in the afternoon. I use a Minelab Excalibur, an underwater detector used by SCUBA divers around the world. It has served me well for a number of years and was my machine of choice for this search. I needed every advantage.

The bottom of the lake fell off sharply at the point where Nicholus felt the ring leave his finger. This meant working in chin deep water. The remains of what seemed to be an old cast-iron pipe in the same vicinity interfered with other signals. But after about a half hour of searching, the ring appeared in my sieve amidst a cluster of shells, mud and roots. Mission accomplished!

Thanks, Nicholus, for the opportunity to recover your ring. May its story continue for many, many happy years together!

A family photo session at the historical Covered Bridge Park near Cedarburg, Wisconsin ended on a frantic note when Shannon Lennox discovered that his wedding ring was missing. The park is a big place! The ring could have fallen off anywhere, including the river over which they had walked on a bridge with their busy children in tow.

I met up with Shannon late in the afternoon of October 18th. A preliminary search in the areas where he and his family had posed for the photographer failed to locate the lost ring. By this time it was dark and Shannon drove home to put his children to bed. I continued for a few more hours searching perimeter areas not previously covered. One location was particularly inundated with metal trash, making the cacophony of signals almost impossible to decipher. This and the taller grass combined to militate against technology and my best efforts.

Finally, I tried one more adjustment, that of reducing my XP Deus detector’s sensitivity by nearly half and by sweeping the detectors coil higher than usual over the grass. This eliminated most of the buried trash signals and allowed only those objects on the surface to register. It wasn’t long before a clear gold-ring number shone through the darkness. Carefully dividing the grass beneath revealed the gold wedding band, complete with its ‘ROMANS 12’ biblical inscription, a life chapter that serves to guide Shannon’s Christian life as a husband, father and friend.

The twins were not yet settled when I rang Shannon’s doorbell a short while later. Wide-eyed disbelief was written all over his face when I presented him with his cherished ring. Such moments have always been my favorite!

Vicky* heard the earing as it landed on the family’s boat dock. Then there was silence. The sickening realization that her earing was now at the bottom of Big Cedar Lake prompted a frantic search for her prized gold and silver jewelry piece. She knew it couldn’t have gone far but all efforts to retrieve it from the lake bottom proved fruitless.

I received a call from Vicky who subsequently discovered The Ring Finders directory on the Internet. Soon, my wife, Kathleen and I were on our way to Big Cedar Lake and to Vicky’s lovely home. She accompanied us to the dock and described the moments when she felt the earing drop.

Before entering the Lake, I carefully scanned the bottom with an underwater detector made by an Australian company, Minelab. The Excalibur, as it is called, is the tool of choice for many SCUBA divers worldwide. Detecting from the dock helped not to disturb the bottom unnecessarily. Almost immediately, a promising signal came from a location barely a meter out from the dock. Within minutes, the signal proved to be that of Vicky’s earing!

* Vicky, not her real name, preferred not to be identified or to have her photo published.

I had only been home about an hour from conducting a successful ring search on the other side of our great state of Wisconsin when I received an email from Phil Johnson in Greenfield, WI. On November 14th he lost his wedding ring while cleaning out the rain gutters on his house. He had no idea where to begin searching. Carly, Phil’s wife joined him, scouring the immediate vicinity of the house but without success. The white gold inscribed ring had vanished.

Like an increasing number of people in his situation, Phil turned to the Internet for tips on searching for lost rings. That is where he discovered The Ring Finders website and my profile on its directory of Metal Detecting Specialists here in Wisconsin.

Phil had plenty of questions. What kind of success rates did I see? How long does a search take? Are there terrain limitations I needed to be made aware of? How quickly did a search need to be done? How could he go about scheduling a search? And when could I come? It was clear from Phil’s questions he was a detail man. I like that because recovering lost rings is all about details. Details can mean the difference between a successful recovery and a ring that eludes discovery despite even the best search efforts.

It was my plan to drive over to Phil’s house the next morning. However, work responsibilities and pouring rain combined to delay my search until late in the afternoon. By the time I arrived, the rain and the wind had increased significantly. The street in front of the Johnson’s home was like a torrent of water. I donned rubber boots and rain gear, calibrated my XP Deus wireless detector and made my way to the front of the house. In my mind I settled in for a long soggy evening searching the entire .3 acres.

As often is the case around houses, the ground was full of metallic debris. Further fine-tuning was needed to discriminate against ferrous metal and high mineralization in the ground. I also used a test ring of the size and gold quality that closely matched the one Phil described. Tuning complete, I made exactly four sweeps of the coil when suddenly I heard a perfectly matching signal to my test ring. Thinking I needed to make further adjustments to my detector, I bent over to look more closely in the gathering darkness. As I did so, rainwater poured off my parka. Parting the grass with my wet fingers, I saw to my utter surprise it was Phil’s wedding band!

Phil, you asked, “How long does a search take?” Well, congratulations for being my client with the fastest ring recovery to date! I conservatively estimate it took less than 4 minutes to fine tune my equipment and locate your ring. Your recovery was also my third one in just 7 days, a personal hat-trick record!

It was great meeting you both. May the story of your ring continue for many years! And thanks for your generous reward.

Veterinarian, Dr. Sarah Slaby, was assisting her husband, Noah with chores on their family’s Cozy Creek Farmstead near Arcadia, WI. All was routine until Sarah arrived back at house and realized to her horror that her wedding rings were missing! That was Saturday evening, November 14th.

She recalled having the rings on her finger as she removed nylon netting on a bale of hay out in a field. Some of the strings had become entangled on the ring’s diamond posts. It crossed her mind to remove the rings and put them in a pocket for safekeeping, a precaution she later regretted not heeding. Thus began a desperate search. But where does one begin to look for a ring on a farm and in a barn full of hay, cattle and manure? The proverbial needle-in-a-haystack metaphor seemed very real.

After fruitless hours searching on her hands and knees through feed troughs and around hay bales it was all Sarah could do to fight back the sickening feeling at the thought that her precious wedding rings might be lost forever. Had a cow ingested them? If so, they could be anywhere by now.

The next day I received a call from Sarah. She was thinking of renting a metal detector but while looking on line she stumbled across The Ring Finders website and its directory of metal-detecting specialists. Would I consider coming to Trempealeau County, a four-hour drive away? Dr. Slaby was able to provide a precise chronology of her activities, a factor that contributes greatly to successful recoveries. History, in fact, is key.

I arrived at the Slaby homestead the following morning around 9:00 a.m. The weather was threatening rain and so we began the search outside in a field where she had last observed the ring on her finger. The rain, however, forced our retreat to the barn and to an area where she had been stripping hay from a large round bale and feeding it to the Holstein herd. Almost immediately I picked up a distinctive signal from my XP Deus wireless metal detector, one I was hoping to hear. Unbelievably, beneath a three-inch layer of hay and straw lay Sarah’s wedding rings! The accompanying photo of the rings is complete with dust, just as they were found. It wasn’t quite like finding a needle in a haystack, but I think it came awfully close!

Thank you, Sarah, for allowing me the privilege of recovering your precious rings and for your generous reward. Our success was largely due to your precise chronology of events, without which, the recovery would have been nearly impossible. My four-hour journey home was a satisfying one knowing you and your family would be savoring your ring’s story and the video that you took of the occasion with little Zionah. We prayed for success. God, by His grace, was pleased to answer our prayers.

A glorious fall day in South East Wisconsin was robbed of its joys for Krystal and Chris Schlegel when Krystal’s 1-karat solitaire diamond engagement ring vanished into a thick leafy carpet in the couple’s backyard. Renting a metal detector only turned their hopes to greater despair when all it yielded was a cacophony of squawks and screeches regardless where they searched—the ground was full of ferrous metal debris! That is when they discovered The Ring Finders website and learned of my metal-detecting services right in their hometown of Menomonee Falls, WI. An email and a phone call was all it took to make the arrangements.

I met up with Krystal on the afternoon of November 10th. She showed me the area where they believed the ring went missing. About an hour’s search using my XP Deus detector with its unique, all-wireless technology, was all it took to locate the ring’s hiding place amidst the rusty rubble. The smile on Krystal’s face was, well, her picture speaks for itself. So glad I was able to help you find your ring, Krystal! May its story continue for many happy years to come.