Uncategorized Category | Page 444 of 483 | The Ring Finders

       This was quite a day to usher in Spring. First, I find that one of my best friends passed away. RIP Jeff! I find a precious custom made ring for a nice lady, and then my San Diego Aztecs win their NCAA playoff game in overtime. Each emotional and important in their own special way.

      When I contacted Emily, she said that she thought that she had dropped her engagement ring in a patio area of her apartment building and needed help locating it. I loaded up the car with my gear, grabbed my wife, and headed to Sunset Cliffs, an area on the south side of Ocean Beach. When I get to the address, I find it’s an apartment building right on the cliff overlooking the ocean. Nice view! I meet Emily and get the full story on the ring. Her fiance’ had it custom made in Bahrain so it had extra special meaning for their up coming marriage. In fact, they were to have a photo shoot in a few days! Without the ring….well, it just woundn’t be the same. She explained that one of the stones had come loose from the ring so she took the ring off and put it into a zippered pocket in her purse along with her keys. Well, before she could get to the jeweler, an event happened that drew her attention. It seems a person decided to commit suicide by driving their car off the cliff to the rocks below right behind their apartment! Really, I’m not making this up! Naturally, this drew a crowd, Emily included. She had a perfect bird’s eye view from the patio area right above the scene when she decided to grab her keys out of her purse. You guessed it, the ring, unbeknowst to her, came out with the keys and fell somewhere in the landscaping or over the edge of a metal railing that ran around the edge of the steel reinforced concrete patio.

       There were two main areas where she was standing with one being the most likely. I started there and immediately discovered that this wasn’t going to be easy with the rebar in the concrete, the heavy steel railing, and the high bushes in between them. I detected there the best I could with my small coil on my E-trac and then started to work my way over to the other area, thinking that I’d probably be back with my pin pointer to complete the search. There also was a posibility that the ring had fallen over the edge of the railing  and into some iceplant as she had been leaning over it to view the rescue of the driver below. I cringed at that thought as it was almost straight down for 30-40 ft. and without a ladder from below, there was virtually no access. I wound my way to the other viewing area and ran into the same problems….did I mention that this had steel reinforced concrete and huge, rusty, Titaniclike ship railing in the search area? As luck would have it, I got a solid gold ring hit right off the bat but it was mixed with other sounds that were interfering. I swung around 90 degrees and got a better hit free of interference. From that angle, I could just see the edge of a beautiful ring poking out from under a dead leaf. I picked it up and handed it to Emily who understandably was overjoyed. I’m glad I could help in making your upcoming photo shoot and marriage come off as you had planned. Thank you for the reward! Now go get that stone installed! Here’s the lovely ring and Emily’s beautiful smile. Check out that view too!

I got a call from Dawn C. a month ago to find a ring that her Son-in-law lost while playing with his dog in a foot of snow in the back yard. I made arrangements to come out to look for the ring and after trudging through a foot or better of snow I found it was too difficult to swing my detector due to a crust of ice about 6 inches below the fluffy snow. Glen F. had put his ring in an inside pocket of his jacket because he didn’t want to loose it throwing the ball to his dog. When he went back into the house he noticed that the pocket had a hole in it and his ring fell out while in the back yard. The ring was made by an independent jeweler named Michael Perry in Dublin, Ireland, where Glen is from. He made matching rings for him and his wife, Reagan, of grey gold and steel, a type of metal of his own creation.  This was a special loss to Glen. I told him I would be back after a thaw and find his ring. It has now been a month later and it was 45 degrees today and the snow pack has gone down and made it easier to detect. I brought along my detecting friend, Dave B., to help in the search. After about 15 minutes into the search Dave got a signal about 66 on his AT Pro and asked me to check it out because he dug down and couldn’t find anything. I used my Bounty Hunter Time Ranger on ALL METAL mode and got a signal. I dug a little deeper in the hole and there it was about a foot down in the snow. Glen was at work so I asked Dawn, Glen’s mother-in-law to show the ring for our book of smiles. It is always a pleasure to help someone find their lost treasure.

Barb W. emailed me after loosing her heirloom special made diamond wedding ring. While cleaning her basement in her condo, organizing Christmas decorations and sorting some books she assumed she had lost her ring there. After going back up stairs and doing some more cleaning she noticed the ring missing. She went on line and located theringfinders. Telling me the story again over the phone I agreed to travel the hour and a half to help her find the ring. I have helped a gentleman find his ring in his basement before so I had an idea how I wanted to approach this. I had the gentleman clean one end of the basement and then start bringing items from one side onto the cleared out side while examining each item first. He remembered hearing the ring hit the concrete but disappeared from view. He found the ring had bounced into a corner by a box and moving the box around produced the ring. It was a simple procedure then, but finding Barbs ring was a little bit harder. I retraced her movements around the basement going through a bookcase, Christmas decorations, art work in boxes and a three drawer cabinet. Unable to find the ring I ask Barb to think real hard about what she did that day and to retrace her actions.  She then remembered wrapping a package upstairs and went to the box of wrapping material and there it was.

With tears in her eyes she yelled « I found it ». Mark, her husband was all smiles and I got teary eyed with happiness. It is the greatest feeling finding a lost ring even if it wasn’t me that found it.