14K Gold Pendants, Gifted By Great Grandmother Lost In Tall Grass, in Westbrook, Maine, Found With A Metal Detector
Recovery and Return’s #38 & 39
On Friday Night, June 14th, I received a text at approximately 7:40pm. It said
“My daughter was playing outside and lost her gold cross and a small gold basketball off her necklace I’m located in Westbrook, Maine what do you charge thanks Jon”
I replied,
“Hi Jon, sorry to hear this.
“I do not charge for my time or for my service. I do require a $25.00 Transportation Fee, to cover my gas, tolls, wear and tear, etc.
Where did she lose it? Your property? Private property? Public property?”
Jon then proceeded to tell me
“Yes my property we have a picture of her with it on 5 mins before she went inside changed her shirt and the pendants are gone. She said-early in the day chain got caught on her bike and didn’t think anything of it. The chain and cross were given to her when her great grandmother died.”
With it now being almost 8:00pm and raining slightly, I told Jon I could be there 1st thing in the morning, after charging my detectors, overnight. Jon and I agreed to meet in the morning and start searching.
I arrived at Jon’s home, in Westbrook, Maine at 7:15am and was promptly met by Jon and his daughter, Jaelyn. Jaelyn told me that she was next to the house, next door and ran home and went in the front door. A total distance of approximately 75+- feet. Jon and Jaelyn had performed a visual search but it was useless. The grass was fairly tall and something as small as the pendants would easily fall out of sight, into the tall grass. I asked Jaelyn where the picture of her, with the pendants, still on the necklace was taken. Jaelyn took me to the spot and told me that as soon as the picture was taken, she ran home. I decided to start the search there and asked Jaelyn to walk the same path, as she had run the previous night and I would follow her, very slowly, with my Minelab CTX-3030, with a very small 6 inch sniper coil.
About 10 minutes into the search, I received a very, very, very, low sounding chirping noise. I looked into the deep grass, but couldn’t see anything. I removed my handheld pinpointer and stuck it into the deep grass and received a nice loud signal. Pushing the grass aside, I saw the top of the 14K Gold Cross, Thank God! Jon and Jaelyn couldn’t believe it and Jon said that the cross, is the more important pendant. The cross had been given to her, after her Great Grandmother had passed away.
Now, to find the very small 14K Gold Basketball Pendant. I finished searching the path that Jaelyn had taken and no basketball pendant. We all talked about the possibility of the pendant, flying off her, as she ran and into the hedges, in the front of the house. I was also thinking the basketball pendant was smaller than the cross and decided to search the path again. This time, I would search with only the hand held pinpointer, by bending over for the length of the search. Still no basketball pendant. Did it bounce, into the hedges? Out towards the street? Don’t know, so I decided to grid search the entire lawn. I started at the lawn, near the front door she had gone in. No luck. I then moved to the lawn in front of the house and started searching there. As I came up to the light post, I received a nice strong signal, about 2-4 inches, from the light post. Could I be picking up some metal associated, with the post and wires below? I looked closely, into the grass but still didn’t see anything. As I put my pinpointer, into the grass, it received a signal and as I moved the grass with the pinpointer, I could barely make out something, gold in color. As I reached down and grabbed the item, I could see a very small Gold Basketball. I finally found it, after just under 2 hours of searching. The pendant was just a few feet, off of the path that Jaelyn had run , the previous night.
I then texted Jon and told him I had found the pendant. A few minutes later, Jon and Jaelyn came outside and I asked them if they could see the pendant, in the grass. They could not see it and I passed my coil over the pendant and showed them where it was. The pendant would never have been found, with a visual search.
Jaelyn and Jon told me they didn’t think I would find either pendant , but now they were both smiling ear to ear. Jon had told me that the previous night, Jaelyn was inconsolable and just crying and crying, because she had lost her Great Grandmother’s Gold Cross. Jaelyn is now feeling much better, knowing she has both pendants again. I am so grateful that I am able to reunite people with their extremely sentimental items.
