Nighttime Ring Recovery, Falmouth, Massachusetts
7 January 2026. To adapt a phrase from the USPS, ‘Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night shall stay this RingFinder from his mission’ (or something to that effect :-). I received a call from Sonja about 8PM, well after dark, asking if I could help find her ring on the street in the front of her house. Based on her answers to my questions it seemed likely that the ring was on the asphalt, in which case a metal detector would have no advantage over a good flashlight, as the ring would easily be seen visually before a detector swung over it. However, it was possible that the ring could have ended up in the snow or grass on the side of the street. Moreover, it was important to find the ring as soon as possible so that it would not be run over by traffic. I said that I’d be glad to come and do a search and headed out for Sonja’s house.
I arrived about 20 minutes later and had Sonja describe how she thought her ring had been lost. She noted that she had slimmed down recently and the three rings she wore on her ring finger were very loose. She had driven home after retrieving a pair of traffic cones from a friend’s house, stopped on the street short of a utility trailer at the edge of the street in front of her house, removed the traffic cones from her trunk, and placed them at the front and back of the trailer. As she placed one cone in front of the trailer she heard a single ping from the pavement and saw that two of her rings were gone from her finger. She was able to find one ring but not the other near that cone.
So, assuming that all 3 rings were on her finger when she opened her trunk, the missing ring could be in her trunk or on/beside the street somewhere from the position of her car trunk over to the vicinity of the trailer. We each had strong-beamed flashlights and we first searched around and under the front of the trailer where the first cone had been placed. We found nothing. I then began a search starting where the car’s trunk had been and working toward the trailer while Sonja searched farther down the street from the back of the trailer. Within a couple of minutes Sonja called out that she’d found the ring!
This was a fortunate start to the New Year and I’m hoping a good omen for successful searches in the months to come. And with some resizing, we can also hope that Sonja’s rings will remain safely on her finger where they belong!
Sonja’s rings back on her finger.
Sonja’s triplet of rings, starring a beautiful aquamarine at the center.
