Last Thursday I received a call from Gust, asking if I would be willing to come out and search for his wife’s gold wedding ring they believed she lost in the yard while cutting back some shrubbery.
He had searched the internet, found Ring Finders, and I was the closest to them, even though I was a hour and a half drive away.
After discussing the circumstances about the loss, we agreed I would drive out the following Sunday (I had an unchangeable appointment Friday, Saturday was forecast heavy rain, and since it was likely on their property, it wasn’t going to be found by some random person).
I loaded up the Manticore, and my AT Gold as a backup, and made the hour and a half drive up the Columbia River Gorge into Washington to do the search. When I arrived, Gust and Liz were waiting in the front yard.
Liz walked me through what she had been doing when the ring went missing. She demonstrated how she had been pulling back the bushes, trimming them, then tossing the clippings into a pile. She then carried the clippings to the back of their property and threw them down the hill. I asked her how confident she was it was lost outside. She said she was very sure, since she never takes it off, and noticed it was gone when she went inside and washed her hands. I got my gear and started.
Gust and Liz were standing by watching, I briefly explained looking for on the detectors VDI, and what I was hearing in the headphones. I worked the area under and the around the shrubs and found there were metal spikes and staples holding in some of the landscaping, and a couple of T-posts deep inside the shrubs.
Not finding it there, I scanned the areas where she said she had been tossing the clippings. It wasn’t there, so I began a circular search pattern around the bush. When I found a signal and stopped to check it, Liz would comment on the VDI and move closer. I explained that the numbers can be deceiving, and I was really just listening to the sound the detector made.
I got about 3/4s of the way around the bush, and in the bark-chips I heard the unmistakable sound of gold in my headphones. Gust and Liz were still nearby, so I shut off the headphones and went over to them. I scanned over what was probably a staple and asked if they could hear how scratchy the sound was. I then went to where the ring was and scanned over it, asking if they could hear the difference. I said “That’s your ring” and before I could do anything else, Liz dove in and recovered her ring buried in the bark!
Very special to reunite this ring with a super nice couple of people. She’s worn it for 43 years, and now it’s back where it belongs.
