Lost Ring Recovered in North Dakota.
On Wednesday, July 17, I received a text wanting to know if I traveled to a very distant location. I told them that I didn’t know for sure, I would have to look on a map. This was a request from a fellow coworker of a family member. So, I told them that I would do it. I took off and made it to the location by 7:00 PM. my concern was to have enough daylight to make things a little easier.
They had told me that the caller’s husband had been concerned about losing his ring, so he took it off and put it in a compartment on his jet ski. As you know that non-moving jet skis have a little stability issue and was pushing off from a dock and the jet ski rolled over. The compartment that held the ring popped open and the ring fell out. While it was a terrible incident, it was a blessing that it happened in a location that was only in 3 1/2 feet of water.
I went into the water at the location described and as you can imagine a boat launch that has been in operation for many, many years had debris from those years. A bottle cap or pull-tabs here and there, fishing weights, boat trailer parts and the many other items that you would think would be associated with well used boat launch. It was a much more difficult hunt then what I was thinking. The things that were going right were that the location was a small area, and the water was shallow in that location. There was small and medium size cobble or round rocks on the bottom that was making scooping a signal very difficult. What I was thinking was going to be a 30-40 minute turned into a 2-hour recovery.
I had brought 2 detectors with me, a Minelab Equinox 900 with a 10-inch coil, and a Garrett AT Pro with a small D coil. After hunting for an hour and a half, I decided to switch over to the AT Pro to help discriminate the different targets. This move was my saving grace. It allowed me much more control over the targets and pinpointing those targets was key. After about another 30 minutes I found the ring. What a beautiful sight it was to see it in my scoop. A white gold men’s wedding band, just like described.
Another Happy ending.
Turns out – I guess I do go out that far after all, who knew….
Happy reunion
I had to sneak into one photo.
OK it was a 5 1/2 hour drive one way.
I also have a God daughter that lived along the route, and I could make nervous that I was checking on her.
Life is so good.
What a wonderful weekend it was going to be, fantastic weather, great company, car is all unloaded, and just sitting on the outside on the deck, having a cold drink, enjoying the ocean breeze, when a voice from inside hollers, “we have a problem” !!!! Linda went inside to see what I might be, and it was most peoples nightmare, a clogged toilet. One would think this is an easy fix, but unfortunately it was not. After 2 days of trying to plunge the clog, it was now backing up in the downstairs laundry slop sink. A local plumber on LBI come out to assess the situation, unfortunately without locating the outside cleanout he was not able to finish the job. She called the guy he recommended who handles much lager jobs, and would be equipped with a 200′ snake. Once again, without the location of the outside cleanout he was not able to do anything either. That’s where I come into play. After 2 days, Linda called me wondering if I was able to locate a sewer cleanout. My concern was, if it was all plastic my equipment would not be helpful. After a short conversation, I headed out to try and help. After looking the entire plumbing situation over, I received many possible signals, in the area the cleanout should be. After quite a bit of digging, the cleanout was located, and now Linda could have the plumber return to snake out the entire line. This was a “stinky” situation to start of the weekend, but ended up on a positive note.
Eileen called just as I had gotten out of the dentists office, wondering if it would be possible to come and search for her I-Phone that slid off the roof of a car, and landed somewhere alongside the roadway. She explained that she had put the phone on the roof of the car, and said goodbye to her company. Forgetting the phone was on the roof she went inside, and her company drove off. The following day she realized the phone was missing, and realized what had happened. She contacted her friend hoping he had picked it up prior to leaving the night before, which wasn’t the case. They had finally decided it must have slid off the car roof and landed somewhere on the side of the road. Using the find my phone app. they found the last known location of the phone before it died, where they searched for 4 days without any luck. That was when she decided to call in a professional recovery expert. We made arrangements to meet on the side of the roadway that afternoon. It was there Eileen went into more detail about HOW important this phone was, as nothing was backed up to the cloud, including over 6000 pictures, that were absolutely unreplaceable. This area was right in front of a big housing complex, that had manicured grounds with fences and pristine walking paths. I was praying it didn’t fall off there as the grass cutters had recently cut the lawn, and it would have shredded it to bits, had they ran it over. I instructed Eileen to go into the management office, explain what happened, and ask if possibly the phone was turned in. While she was in doing that I covered the entire area on both sides of the road, and all the landscape, with no luck, just as I had figured. Standing back, looking in the opposite direction, the curve in the road looked ever so inviting of an area, for a phone to slide off the roof. I walked back covering everything from the road in about 10′ with no luck. Then I turned around and continued back along the tall weeds, and wood line. Right along the weeds, just inside of where the mowers cut, I received the loudest broken signal from my metal detector, that I know ever to familiar, would be her cell phone. Sure enough BINGO!!!! I had her phone. I decided to record the moment when I returned her it, and needless to say, what a heart filled experience it was, reuniting Eileen with over 6000 photos, which covered many years of her life prior, to this almost tragic mishap.
