Sunday 1/25/15
Helen is visiting Venice Beach here in Southern California from Brazil . After walking the Venice Oceanfront walkway with her son William. They stopped to watch all the people working out at the area known as Muscle Beach. Then they decided to walk out through a small walkway to the beach and watch the waves. When they got to the beach, that’s when Helen noticed her favorite ring was not on her finger. This ring was special because her husband gave it to her 15 years ago and she wears it all the time.
Helen went to a tourist information center there at the beach near the lifeguard station. She didn’t have a working cell phone, so the man at the desk helped her find TheRingFinders directory and he called me. I didn’t asked for any details but I told them I could be there in about an hour if she could meet me. She agreed to meet me at 3pm.
While I was traveling across town Helen was doing a little research. She did not know exactly when the ring fell off her finger. They had walked quite a few hours taking many photos. It was a sunny 80 degree day and some areas were full of people waking the beachfront tourist sites. Helen and her son William had taken hundreds of pictures so they went through the photos. They eliminated the first part of the day and remembered stopping to put on sunscreen in the sandy passage way to the beach. While waiting for me somebody on the beach loaned them a metal detector. They could not find the ring before I arrived. When I met her I decided to try that passage way first. It was only 12 feet wide and 30 feet long, full of small metallic trash. The wall along one side was reinforced with rebar making it hard to get a signal next to the wall. People were also passing through in family groups. I’ll bet probably a couple hundred people walked through this area from the time the ring was dropped. Just before going to the beach side of the bicycle path I saw an edge of the ring sticking out of the sand, just before swinging my coil over it. It had to be stepped on and kick up again, maybe a couple of times.
The most important thing was Helen was so happy to have her favorite ring back. I told her that we have a member of TheRingFinders in Brazil and other countries also. I need to thank Steve Smith another member of TheRingFinders for referring me to the people who called. It was a good search and I stayed on the beach till sunset doing more detecting for fun and exercise. I can remember at least 6 or 7 times that I’ve found other nice rings after doing a ring search. I would like to return them all but it is not possible sometimes. After all these years I look at rings I find in a whole new perspective. The sentimental value is much more important to the person that possessed it for years and the real story of the ring is only known to that person that lost it. It is important that we can help some people keep the story of their ring and all the memories that go along with it to keep going.
Nice eyeball find Stan! That happens more then people know…when you detect your eyes are just as important as your detector sometimes it can save you many hours of detecting!
Stan. Sometimes good eyesight is all you need. As for each ring having a story… wouldn’t it be nice if someone (Chris Turner) could capture the really good stories in a book supported by photos?!
Hi Larry, Chris Turner here…We have it already…It’s called »The Book of Smiles » Every ring has a story and there’s the picture of the smiling person who lost the ring and on the blog page of the member who found the ring…is the story. As far as one story being better then another… I just can’t do that…in my opinion every story is a great story!
Thank you so much , you’re amazing and I have no words to say how much happy I am , I came back to Brazil but never forgot about that day I have lost my ring. It was about a year ago and still saying thank you every day for your help.