Uncategorized Category | Page 563 of 599 | The Ring Finders

I got a call Dec 9, 2013 from a man who said he lost his gold wedding ring in the snow yesterday (6-8 inches of fluffy white stuff). I told him that I would love to help but my truck was in the shop. I said I could come tomorrow. He said he had to work all day. I told him that I would come up tonight around 6pm, a night hunt…

When I arrived we went over the details of what he could remember. He took his new bride, from India, out to play in her 1st snow that she has ever seen. They were just married in May in India. He was taking pictures and they were having fun playing in the snow. Snow angles and all.

He said they stopped in like 4 areas to take pictures. He had the ring on at the first stop and it was gone at the last stop, noticed by reviewing the pictures. He didn’t realize till this morning that the ring was gone. The whole walk might have been 3/4 of a mile.

I went and got my machine. We started in the area that they took the 1st set of pictures. I quickly got a signal that was in the gold range on my machine. I kicked the snow aside, and you could see he was very excited. We didn’t see any gold & I had to explain the machine will make a lot of sounds during our hunt.

I continued on and then doubled back, starting a small grid pattern. Within 2 minutes we had another promising sound. I kicked the snow aside and we both saw gold. A total of five minutes of detecting & we had the ring. The look on his face was priceless. He couldn’t believe it. He said that he thought the ring was gone forever.

We went back to his apartment & he invited me in to look at the pictures he took yesterday. I am glad that I was able to find his ring. I wasn’t very confident after hearing how far of a walk they took. But by playing detective and starting where he knew he had the ring paid off!!

High school student, Maya Zelaya, heard the sound of her class ring when it ricocheted off the aluminum siding of her house. Then—sickening silence.

Fresh snow was falling in Franklin, WI, on December 13, a Friday-the-13th Maya would not soon forget. As she removed her glove from the hand on which she wore her white-gold, ruby & sapphire studded ring, a quick shake of her cold fingers was all it took to send the precious ring flying. For Maya, it all seemed surreal, kind of like watching a slow-motion movie with the sound turned off. But her now ring-less finger was all too real. Her class ring, honoring her upcoming graduation year, 2014, was gone.

A frantic search in the snow began. But it was to no avail. The ring seemed to have vanished in the deepening whiteness.

Perhaps they could rent a metal detector. When a friend showed up with a detector late that night it only deepened Maya’s disappointment. A plethora of spurious signals made no sense at all. The ground seemed alive with a cacophony of indiscernible chirps and squawks. It was then, Maya’s Mom, Kyle, found The Ring Finders web site. Were they for real, she wondered.

Being it was a Saturday, I was able to respond right away to the pleading voice message on my iPhone. A few hours later a careful grid pattern narrowed the search to an area where two lengths of drain pipe lay half buried in the fresh Wisconsin snowfall. Amidst the befuddling chatter in my headphones, a distinctive signal was faintly discernable. It came from the vicinity of one of the drainpipes. Sure enough, wedged underneath the pipe lay Maya’s ring. It was buried in about two inches of white stuff. But its hiding place was no match for my Minelab Excalibur 2 detector and a tuition honed by 36 years of metal detecting around the world.

Maya, I so much enjoyed helping to get your ring back and seeing your beautiful smile. Your Mom and Grandma sure pulled out all the stops for you. May you all have a wonderful Christmas together in your new home! And may the story of your ring continue for many, many Christmases to come.