Saturday evening, after the Crooked Lake sandbar Music Festival (in water event), Noah and Kayla returned to their dock site where Kayla went for a short swim around the pontoon. She swam along the side of the pontoon, between it and another pier, when her hand hit the lake bottom for a moment and she felt her ring slide off her finger. She stopped, surfaced, checked her finger and saw it in fact had fallen off.
The bottom is a layer of clay silt over some gravel and sand. The spot of loss was about 3-4 feet deep. They tried to find it, kids helped also, to no avail.
A friend of mine, familiar with my services, put them in contact with me and arrangements were made for the recovery attempt this morning. She sounded confident about the exact spot it had fell off, which was nice to hear.
Kayla sent me a picture of the ring type, a Tiffany & Co « T » ring (a non closed ring), white gold with some diamonds. Non-closed rings, especially with that large of a gap, can be difficult for most detectors to sound off on. It’s just a phenomenon that occurs, as with many bracelets and necklaces also.
I’m running a Minelab Manticore detector, which is one of the newest and most sensitive units at this time. I have confidence that if any machine would « see » that ring, it would.
I let them know about the possibility, that the ring may be undetectable, but assured them that I had confidence in my detector.
In the water I went, began searching, found a couple washers, quarters, several 22 bullets, several prop curls and some nails, but no ring. Expanded the area slighly, to under the pier where her right hand was favoring, but still no ring. Worked the area from different directions, still no ring. Switched to the extra sensitive gold mode and re-swept the area further, finding a few more tiny metallic objects, but still no ring. Got the dive mask and snorkel out, worked some zones visually and with a pinpointer, finding a couple tid bits of 22 shell casings and nails again. About an hour had passed now, I was getting a bad feeling, that either the ring was indeed undetectable, or that maybe it just wasn’t there anymore.
I asked if anyone had seen them searching for it, or if they told anyone where it was lost. They said yes, two younger kids saw them searching, knew what they were seraching for and said they were going to go get goggles and come back to search for it (hopefully didn’t find it and maybe keep it). Well, I had scoured the loss spot and beyond, many many times over and I could see Kayla had a look of sadness, because it appeared as if her ring she cherished dearly was not gonna be found.
I asked if it was ok that i just try another little bit, one more hail Mary (which I seem to do on most searches). Got a very weak and low signal, but faintly repeatable, got the pinpointer down on it and got a somewhat good response with that too. Reached down, grabbed a handfull of bottom, brought my hand up to the surface, the muck fell off the sides of my hand and a nice sight to see revealed itself to me and Kayla that was looking down from the pier above. She was ecstatic, I was very thrilled and relieved (lotsa eyes upon me from above, kids watching too). Walked over and put it in her hand, carefully.
Afterwards, on dry land, I asked if I could test the ring to see how the detector reacted with it. About 2.5″ max, in gold mode, super faint 03 vdi. Glad it worked out, as were they.
June is a great time of year, weather is warming up, school is getting out for the summer, the beach scene is almost in full swing, graduations, prom, etc. That’s when Hailey had a horrible mishap. She was at the Jersey Shore for the weekend after the prom, enjoying the beach life, when her phone totally disappeared somehow, in the soft sugar sand of Seaside Park NJ. She reached out to me 
