23 September 2025. Yesterday I received an email from Lesley inquiring whether I might be able to search for her husband John’s lost wedding ring. She had read a story in the Boston Globe Magazine about the RingFinders in which I was mentioned, and she knew me from past times as we both worked for the same employer. She wasn’t very confident that a search would be fruitful because the ring had been lost about a year and a half ago, presumably ‘somewhere in their yard’. I said I’d be happy to do a search and we made an appointment for me to search this morning.
The good thing about a loss on someone’s property of course is that there are no other detectorists who might have found the ring during the interval since it was lost, as can easily happen if a ring is lost on public property like a beach. The bad thing is, ‘somewhere in the yard’ is a pretty vague basis for doing a search.
Before I began the search, Lesley showed me her wedding ring, which was a match to John’s. Fortunately John had a pretty good idea that his ring might have come off his finger sometime when he was checking the irrigation system under a long row of evergreen trees. I began my search in the area John described, deep under the low branches of the trees and along their perimeter. This turned up nothing but some of the usual yard trash. I then searched the remainder of the back yard and down to the edge of a depression where brush was discarded. Brush piles are a good candidate for lost rings because rings can come off as debris is tossed, but John indicated that these piles had accumulated after he had lost his ring, so I didn’t dig into them.
After nearly two hours of searching, the remaining likely candidate was under evergreens upslope of the irrigation system, where John might have done some other poking around or cleaning. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes John’s ring turned up under mixed dirt and leaf debris 10 or 12 feet from the initial search area!
I walked over to John and Lesley who were sitting on a nearby porch. Their expressions were something to the effect of ‘well, at least you gave it a good try’, but that quickly changed to ‘I can’t believe it’ when I handed them the ring. We were all delighted that ‘somewhere in the yard’ turned into a successful recovery. Best of all, John and Lesley will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary next month, and it’s great to know that their matched wedding rings will be part of the celebration!
John and Lesley celebrate a successful recovery.
John’s multicolor gold wedding band.
