Finders Category | Page 378 of 438 | The Ring Finders

Wednesday evening while attending the Honolulu Coin Club meeting I got a call from Jay stating his friend Robert from Las Vegas lost his wedding band in the water behind the famous Duke’s at Waikiki Beach. They had been celebrating Roberts 50th Birthday in the 50th State. I told him to email some specifics and I would look at the surf & tide report to determine when the best time to hunt would be. I decided low tide 11:30 AM would be best and the surf was coming down slowly. We met at Robert’s hotel and walked down to the beach. Robert thought the ring came off in waist deep water and he showed me the limits to search, so I started in the wave bench and then in and out from the shoreline to at least chest deep water. I found a dime, then a GoPro HERO 3 camera that took about 20 scoops to dig up. It was toast. Then half a penny and a first ever thimble. What the heck is a thimble doing in the water at Waikiki? This took about an hour without finding the ring. Then Robert’s lovely wife Carla told me she had a video of Robert losing his ring. Great! Lets take a look at it and see if we missed something. The video was dark so we went into Duke’s to get out of the bright sun to see it. Fortunately we both noticed the beach sand was flat in the video so it must have been high tide. Also where we think the ring came off was actually dry sand at low tide. So I went out to the beach and started a grid search in the sand. Where the wet sand met dry sand a little girl had built a sand castle. I initially went around her during the first hunt. This time as I passed over the remnants of the castle I got a nice tone. Two scoops down and there was Robert’s ring. Amazing the little girl didn’t find it while building her castle. Carla came running down and gave me a big hug as I handed her the ring. The tourists on the beach erupted into a round of applause! These are the best moments in this hobby and I cherish each one immensely. Carla then cutely got down on one knee and presented the ring to Robert. Another round of applause went up and there were smiles all around. Aloha to Carla & Robert.

I just finished detecting a favorite swim hole when I got a call from my wife Wendy. She told me that Sydney from Mililani, Hawaii was at Laniakea Beach with her boyfriend Darren when her ring fell off into the sand. The ring had been passed down to her from her Mom and she was very distraught when it was lost. I was about 30 minutes away so I called Sydney to see if she could meet right away. The North Shore surf is blasting at 25 feet so my fear was we weren’t going to have an opportunity with high tide approaching. Sydney assured me that they were well up on the beach in the dry sand. So we met at McDonald’s in Haleiwa Town then proceeded to Turtle Beach. Thankfully we were able to park right across the street from where the ring was lost. Sydney, Darren, Charlie (Sydney’s dog) & I walked over to the sandy area under a tree where the ring had fallen off. No bigger then two parking stalls I was able to locate the ring on the second leg. Nice gold tone and since there were gem stones I carefully moved the sand and there was the beautiful blue sapphire shining in the sunlight. I asked Sydney, « What did your ring look like again? » « This must be it! » With a sigh of relief she gave me a big hug and a very sincere « Thank you » That’s what really makes it all worthwhile. Aloha to Sydney & Darren.