Ryan Cole, Author at The Ring Finders | Page 3 of 3

Lost palladium wedding ring, (recovered) Niles, Michigan (Cass County)

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Andrew was doing spring clean up in his yard, tending to the flower beds and lanscaping. When he removed his glove, his palladium wedding ring went flying in an unknown direction. He thought it likely went into one certain area, but searching there only produced aluminum scrap(flashing) from the home’s construction and a couple pop can pull tabs. I broadened the search area, moving into the small wood lot in the opposite direction where I was finding pop cans and more junk pieces. I got a promising signal in a leaf pile, which ended up being a chipmunk hole entry point. Dug around in the hole with my pinpointer and long behold, the ring had went down the chipmunk hole!

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Lost wedding ring (lost for 9 years, recovered), Lake Manitou, Rochester Indiana

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Alan had lost his tungsten wedding band nine years ago, in Lake Manitou, Rochester Indiana. He was helping with the yearly tradition of intalling the cottage dock sections on Memorial Day weekend. While he was holding the second pier section in place, he adjusted his grip and the ring plopped in the waist deep water, vanishing in the rocks and soft bottom. Alan had lost some weight due to a medical condition, so the ring fit very loosely. He had no idea that lost rings/etc could be found in the water, until just recently when he stumbled across the Ringfinders website.
After an hour of searching, finding many other targets and lots of glass shards, it was looking grim. My tenacity paid off though, finally sorted out a mixed signal and scooped up a couple rusty nails along with his tungsten wedding ring! The ring had some cosmetic damage from being in the water, but Alan was very glad to be reunited with his long lost ring!

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Lost gold wedding ring, Lake Michigan (recovered), Harbert Michigan

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Tony and his family were at his aunt’s lake home for the weekend. It was time to enjoy some time in the chilly Lake Michigan water. Tony and his brother got the kayaks out and headed down to the beachfront area to get in the wavy water and paddle off. After a large wave or two, Tony found himself capsized, missing his sunglasses and wedding ring! He recruited family members to help search the knee deep area, but was only able to locate the sunglasses. He knew he had capsized straight out from the steps on the hillside and was shallower than waist deep.
Luckily, he had a accurate location of loss and there was a short break in the weather and waves for searching.
After less than five minutes, I got a great sounding promising signal and had his lost ring in my new scoop!

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Lost gold wedding ring, Lake Michigan, Dune Acres Indiana, Porter County

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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07/04/2017 Dune Acres, Indiana, Porter County, a « Boater’s Beach » sandbar.

Got a text from a lady who had lost her white gold wedding ring yesterday in Lake Michigan at a “boater’s beach”, in about 4 to 5 feet of water.

She put me in contact with her husband Wade, who said he had a “pretty good idea where it was lost”.

The next morning I drove to the slip, met with Wade, loaded up my gear in his boat and we started for the site of the lost ring.

The wind was picking up, the waves were growing larger. Even in the large cabin cruiser/speedboat it was a fairly slow and rough ride to the sandbar site. When we first spoke after I arrived there, he said he was pretty sure of the location and it was “about a hundred yard sized area”. He actually thought he had seen the ring laying in the sand yesterday while looking for it. He dove down, grabbed at where he through it was, but came up with only handfuls of sand.

I was concerned with Wade having an accurate enough location to narrow the search area, as one hundred yards in the water would take quite some time to cover, essentially a needle in a haystack!

Luckily, Wade had taken some photos yesterday and had his geolocation enabled for the photos. He retrieved the data, plugged in the GPS coordinates in Google Maps and essentially drove us right to the spot.

Wade and I set the front and back anchors, the boat was getting thrashed pretty bad by some larger rogue waves breaking at the sandbar.

Being the 4th of July, Wade got the flag out to fly.

I jumped in and began searching, the wind had blown in some fresh chilly offshore water. The area had lots of black sand and the waves were getting to be a hindrance.

I basically grid searched the area where Wade thought the ring would be. After about twenty minutes or a half hour, I had covered the location around the boat and about twenty yards in each direction thoroughly.

I had brought a spare detector and had earlier mentioned to Wade that he was welcome to utilize it. He asked if there was anything he could do, I told him he was welcome to try using the other detector. I set it up, showed him how it should sound for a ring and told him to just tell me if it makes that noise.

Literally, in less than five minutes, while he was searching slightly closer to shore, he excitedly yells to me “It’s doing something here!”, “ It’s making that noise!”, “Right here!”.

I made my way over, checked the target, it sounded like a nice smooth mid-tone, gently scooped it up, and there was what appeared to be a nice white gold wedding ring in my scoop.

Wade was super excited and relieved at the same time. Even better yet, he actually get’s to say that he found his wife’s special ring for her!

He had mentioned some things that hadn’t gone so well for him in the recent month’s, but said this made it all better.

I was happy to help him find his wife’s lost ring!

This was a rather unique recovery, with him actually being the finder of the ring, thanks to my gear and a quick rundown of how it works. Actually glad it worked out that way, makes the tale that much better!

*photos of Wade and his wife’s ring

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Lost gold ring found (recovered) Lake Wawasee, Syracuse, Indiana

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Got a voicemail from Steve,  a newly married guy that stated he had lost his gold wedding band in Lake Wawasee.

He said he was at the end of the pier when the ring fell off into the water. The water was about 4 feet deep, however, there was many aluminum pier supports and posts surrounding the loss location which made it impossible to use a regular metal detector to locate the ring due to metallic items interfering with detection (unless pier was removed for winter time).

After advising him of this, he was worried he have to wait until fall to have the ring recovered. I told him I have a plan B, which involved using a small pinpointing unit that I use when scuba diving to find small items in the sand and muck. After several minutes of scouring the loss location with no luck, I decided to get my scuba diving mask and take a look around. After a few more minutes, it was looking grim.  There was some weeds growing around the pier supports. I thought to myself, wonder if it’s stuck in those weeds and suspended above the bottom.  I ran the pinpointed up through the weeds, got a signal and then saw the glimmer of white gold flashing towards the bottom. There it was, had been stuck suspended in the weeds! Picked it up off the bottom to present it to Steve who was thrilled to have it back again.

 

 

 

 

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Lost gold ring found (recovered) Eagle Lake, Edwardsburg, Michigan

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Received a phone call from George, a newly married guy, who said he had lost his gold wedding ring in Eagle Lake located in Edwardsburg Michigan.  He was visiting his parent’s lake home for the weekend.  George did some swimming near the dock and had been throwing a tennis ball for their dog to fetch. He was fairly certain he had lost the ring while throwing the ball, but wasn’t totally sure.

George took to the internet to try and find out how or who could help him find or recover his lost ring. He found Ringfinders.com and looked at the directory to see who could help him.

After receiving the call, we arranged a time that worked for our schedules, the following morning worked for both of us.

I arrived at the home, got my equipment out and was promptly in the water searching. There were several metallic items in the search area (pennies, old dock pipes, cans) but a nice hard sand bottom with small rocks everywhere. The water was nice, clear and warm.

After only a couple minutes of searching, I was getting a high probability signal associated with gold rings. Passed the detector over the target and could see the roundness and edges of a gold ring!

George and his new bride were all smiles and very grateful for the help finding his lost ring.

 

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Lost gold ring found, Donnell Lake, Cass County Michigan

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Summer of 2013, I received a phone call from Chris, who had lost his gold wedding band in a local lake (Donnell Lake, Vandalia, MI) while swimming with his family at a sand bar. His ring was purchased as a « matched set » with his wife’s ring and had great sentimental value to him. After losing the ring, he borrowed a metal detector and tried searching for it in the water. With no luck, he turned to the internet and discovered the Ring Finders directory. Turns out that he lived just a couple miles down the road from me. He offered to taxi me and my gear up to the lake property, and within an hour we were on a pontoon headed towards the area where the ring was lost. He had a good idea of where they had been anchored and I promptly got in the water to begin the search with my detector and scoop. The area was littered with alot of metallic debris, modern coins, lead shot and bottle caps which slowed the search process for the ring. After searching all the area he thought it could be in, I ventured a little further out into slightly deeper water, and shortly after, got a promising signal on the metal detector. Upon raising the scoop out of the water, I could see a glint of gold color coming from what looked like the edge of a ring. As the sand sifted from the scoop, I picked up a shiny gold ring from inside the scoop and asked Chris to describe the ring to me again. His description matched precisely, I handed it over, reuniting him with his lost gold wedding band.

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Lost gold Mason ring recovered, LaPorte, IN

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Got a call about a lost Mason’s ring at a yacht club in 10-12ft of water. The person was securing his pontoon to the dock and the ring slipped off onto the abyss. He had worn the ring for the last 40 years and he planned to hand it down to his son in the future.

Joe searched on the internet in hopes of finding someone in the area that may be able to help find his lost ring from the lake bottom.  He quickly found the Ring Finders site, and shortly after was on the phone with me, asking if I could help.

Made the arrangements, grabbed  my dive gear out of storage, did some gear checks and got on the road to LaPorte.
Things were lookin bad right from the get go, really choppy conditions up top, and then who would have thought there would have been hundreds of unfired 22 and 357 rounds scattered everywhere under this boat slip, right in the core search area.
Since I never imagined so many targets in that small area, I didn’t bring my mesh finds bag, so after stuffing my wetsuit with the rounds, I  was about to call it and arrange a future trip to try another recovery technique,  but decided to try just a little longer… Good thing, literally on my last scan with the pinpointer I found the ring.  Joe was a happy camper!

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Lost gold wedding ring found, Big Turkey lake, Lagrange, Indiana

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Last week I was contacted by Ringfinder, Greg Larabel from Michigan, in response to a craigslist ad that I had posted for SW Michigan lost/found rings/etc. After talking a bit, he asked if I could help with lost men’s wedding band in northern Indiana. I said sure thing, and was given the contact info for the party that lost his ring.

Barry, had lost his ring while working in the water, pulling out old wood pier posts at his lake house. The area was full of weeds and has a very mucky, marly bottom, a good 6 inches of muck. He had pulled out a lot of the weeds and actually took a heavy duty pump and attempted to pump out some of the muck in the area he had lost the gold ring that he has worn for 38 years now!

I was somewhat worried that with all the stepping around, pulling weeds and pumping out the muck that the ring may have been pushed down beyond the reach of my detector. Was also worried that the ring could have fallen down into the 3 ft deep holes left from when he pulled the old wood posts out of the lake bottom.

Well, I gave it a go this morning, set up my camera real quick, started out finding a few fishing sinkers, a couple ring looking pieces of cut-0ff aluminum pipe and an old beer can. After about 8 minutes, I had now covered about 85% of the search area and was thinking to myself « I need to hear something good here real soon….! »

Got a nice sounding tone, took a scoop of muck, broke it up with my fingers and gave it a good sloshing. Could hear something clunking around in the bottom of the scoop. Looked in the scoop and could see something nice and yellow in the bottom. There it was! Gave a quick thumbs up and headed to the pier to reunite the ring with it’s owner.

Thanks again Gregg,

Here is the email from Barry to Ringfinder Gregg:

Gregg,
As you may have heard through Ryan, he did find my ring. It took him less than 10-15 minutes. Unbelievable! He did a great job despite what he said were challenges with lead sinkers, a nearby metal dock, and miscellaneous metal parts from long ago. It was in the area I had already searched. I was absolutely ecstatic and couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know how to thank him. There are no words to convey my feelings. The ring had been on my finger for 38 years. When I lost it, it felt like a part of me was missing. I had trouble sleeping for two weeks.

I have not told my wife yet as I plan to take her out to a special dinner and surprise her with it.

Ryan, I cannot express my gratitude enough and I trust the compensation was just. I hope your feeling of helping people is truly rewarding.

Thank you! And thanks to TheRingFinders.com for leading me to both of you.
Barry Smith

 

Also got the hunt and find on video….

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Lost gold ring found at Warren Dunes State Park, Berrien County, Michigan

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Missy, friends and family were enjoying the nice day at the beach. When it was time to cool off in the water, she took her promise ring off and left it on her beach towel so she wouldn’t lose it in the water. Meanwhile, someone had lifted the towel to rid it of sand, sending the ring flying into the soft sand where it was quickly buried and lost.

As they were getting ready to leave, they noticed me out in the water with what they thought might be a metal detector. They asked if I could help them find the lost promise ring, missy described it in detail and I said I’d be happy to help. After a couple minutes searching, finding a few coins and bottle caps, I heard a very nice sounding target signal. I scooped up the target and there it was, the missing gold ring.  Big smiles all around!

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