Uncategorized Category | Page 544 of 585 | The Ring Finders

      I was just about to sit down to dinner when I got a call from Taylor who said that her husband had lost his gold band wedding ring in the dry sand at Mission Beach. He had removed his ring to apply lotion to his child (where have I heard this before?) and had put the ring in his pocket. After some physical activities, including cartwheels, he discovered his ring was no longer in his pocket. They hadn’t left the area so it should have been an easy search….and it was. I started a grid and made 3 passes when I got the typical strong 12-13 on my E-trac which is what I expect to see on your typical gold band. It was almost underneath the baby carriage!

        It was a pleasure to meet you both and thank you for the reward. I was happy to find it before someone else did on this busy beach and before the sand grooming machine ate it. Here’s the ring and the happy faces at the sunset of another day in paradise.

        I received a call from Angela about two gold rings that were lost at the beach in Coronado. The usual story, the rings were removed for skin lotion and stowed for safekeeping but ended up in the sand when the couple packed up to leave. They were just visiting here and had to leave the next mornning, so time was of the essence. When I received the call, they were not available until later to show me in person the exact area but they were able to describe it fairly well.

       Knowing that this beach gets searched often, my wife and I hot footed it down there and I began a grid. I usually do a quick, one-direction, no overlap scan first to hopefully save a lot of time. On a fresh drop in the dry sand like this one, that’s usually all it takes. No such luck this time. The area was reasonable large, even with their detailed description so I was resigned to the fact that I would be there a while. I then started another grid the other direction and worked slow and with a 50% overlap. Still no rings but I was finding coins and good sounding junk, so I knew nobody else had beat me to them. I had already expanded the search area quite a bit so I figured I had covered the « drop area » at least once. Ok, I guess I could have missed one of them but both? Time to start over so I began gridding the area in the same direction as my first quick scan but this time, slow with overlap and dig every sound.  After another half hour or so, I get a scratchy foil/junk signal and out pops the engagement ring! After seeing the tiny size of it, I finally understood why I wasn’t getting a strong signal! It was maybe a size 1 1/2 and wire thin. I then ran a spiral pattern, with the first ring as the starting point. On my second time around, I found the wedding band, same scratchy 12-03 on my E-trac and same tiny wire sized band.  I guess I’ll have to start digging more junk targets when I hunt for fun!

       I made the fun phone call to her husband Mike and offered to drop by their hotel and drop them off. We met a happy Mike out front where he told us that he hadn’t informed his wife yet that they had been found. He was planning a surprise for later. Thank you, Mike, for the reward, and I hope the surprise turned out well and you had a safe flight home!

Brenda B. called me today just as my wife was taking fresh biscuits out of the oven for strawberry shortcake. I told my wife I would be right back because Brenda lives a couple miles away. So I jumped in my car and headed for Brenda’s house. Upon arrival I drove up to a newer development of homes with well manicured lawns and in the middle of her lawn was a screw driver sticking out of the grass. I rang the doorbell and met Brenda, she told me her daughter lost the charm off her necklace while playing in the lawn with her boyfriend. The screwdriver marked the spot where she thinks she lost it. I set up a grid and started in line with the screwdriver I moved back and forthe for about 10 feet both ways. It is amazing how many coin hits I got in a newer lawn but that is not what I was looking for. I expanded my search out about 20 feet and there it was in direct line from the screwdriver 20 feet away. All is well and I suggested that Brenda buy her younger son a detector to find some of those coins.

Got home 45 minutes later and the biscuits were still fresh and warm.

Day trippers to Swanage, Mr & Mrs Rob Evans had enjoyed the day playing with their children on Swanage Beach. Skinny dipping in the sea, building sand castles and playing catch are the biggest causes, I’ve found, to losing jewelry on the beach.

I had received the phone call from Rob after he had found me on The Ring Finders earlier that day. Unfortunately I was out of town on another ring job and wouldn’t be able to make it until the early evening. We met that evening and I was given a run down of where the family had been so we could assess the search area. Unfortunately there was a possibility it could now be under the advancing tide- not a problem but makes things more difficult!

The beach was unusually high in trash due to the storms turning things up. After about an hour I was beginning to consider ‘plan B’ when I received a strange ‘mixed’ signal from the Minelab CTX3030. I recall receiving it earlier and ignored it thinking it was foil. I even said to Rob as I used the sand scoop « don’t get your hopes up its’s probably trash »! Relieved, though a little embarrassed, there at the bottom of the scoop lay the white gold engraved ring AND a large rusty screw!!

A very grateful Mr Evans contacted the air ambulance and made an extremely generous donation. Thanks Rob!

Sunday. The sun is shining, the tide will be low. I thought it would be a perfect day to head off to make yet another attempt to find a lost watch on Boscombe Beach. As I was getting off the Chain ferry I received a phone call from Leo Fung of Bournemouth.

Leo, his new wife and friends had been enjoying the weather on the beach having been married only 24 hours earlier. Whilst playing with a football, Leo felt the ring slip off and caught a glimpse of its direction. They searched the beach extensively for a while until someone remembered seeing me on the BBC news. A quick Google search on their smartphone revealed my number, a phone call and I arrived within half an hour. Within 30 seconds we found the ring, new shiny and very nearly lost. It was the heaviest white gold ring I think I have ever recovered and I’m very relieved to have recovered it for them.

Mr & Mrs Fung made a kind donation to the Dorset & Somerset Air Ambulance to which I am most grateful.

After reading an article in the Dorset & Somerset Air Ambulance magazine of my Ring Finder services; Mr Brian Marchment of Somerset decided to give me a chance to find his wedding band he had lost 3 months earlier.

The drive was long, three hours in fact, accidents, diversions and road closures too!  The location was easy to find, the garden was even easier to navigate. Tidy flower beds, stone walls, gravel paths and many uncomplicated areas that seemed easy to detect.

After speaking with Mr Marchment about the day of his loss and replaying it, we decided where the search was to begin. Within 30 seconds of searching, between the brick path boundaries and grass the detector let off the gold ‘growl’. Laying out of sight, camouflaged by the gravel, lay our ring.  Mr & Mrs Marchment were very pleased having been married decades and made a generous donation to the air ambulance.