I received a call from Paula who had lost her two tone Black Hills gold ring while doing yard work earlier this summer. The ring was a gift from her husband when his service to our country in the Air Force took him to South Dakota over 40 years ago. I headed to Augusta after work today and was able reunite Paula after a 15 minute search of her lawn.
On Thursday July 20, 2023, I received a text, just after 8:00pm, from Leslie. Leslie’s text stated, “Hi! I’m on my annual girls’ trip. At the beach all day and accidentally lost my two family birthstone rings in sand. Can’t find them. Retraced my steps. It’s getting late and I think they go over sand in the early morning. Can you help me? – Leslie”. She is concerned that the town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine cleaning machine would be there early in the morning and swallow up her rings and they would be gone forever. I immediately made plans to meet Leslie at 8:45pm, at the location where she lost the 2 rings. When I arrived , just prior to 9:00pm, I was surprised to see so many people at the beach, sitting on blankets and listening to music from a local beach bar and awaiting fireworks that were to start in less than an hour.
Leslie explained that there were 11 friends sitting around all day and she had taken the two rings off to apply suntan lotion and placed them in the cup holder, on her beach chair. As the day progressed, she had forgotten the rings were in the cup holder and when it was time to leave, folded up the chair and left. Once she realized the rings were missing, she and her friends searched the area they had been sitting in, without any success. They also retraced her steps after leaving the area with the chair, again, with no success. Leslie then attempted to find and rent a metal detector in a Beach store, next to where she was staying. The beach store owner told her they didn’t rent metal detectors but knew of me and recommended that she contact me and he gave Leslie my contact information.
Once Leslie showed me where they were all gathered and sitting for the day, I immediately started to grid the area. After about a 1/2 hour, I had covered the area they had been sitting in. She then told and showed me thecpath she took after leaving the area, with the folded up beach chair. Unfortunately, the path she took was full of people sitting around , listening to music and waiting for the fireworks to start. Still cognizant of the fact the beach cleaning machine would be cleaning the area, early the next morning, I told Leslie that I would be back down at 5:00am and search the area, before the beach cleaning machines could rake the area.
I arrived back at the beach, just before sunrise and immediately started to grid the area. I needed to be fast and through as I could see a beach cleaning machine just about 100 to 150 feet from where I was. I decided to re-grid the the area I had done the previous night, as this was the area where the cleaning machine would be heading next. Still nothing in the area I had done last night but I received a signal about 3-4 feet outside the area I had gridded the previous night. The signal was jumping all around and was not repeating. I slowly passed the coil lover the area and I received a nice solid 12-13 on the CTX-3030. I brushed some sand around and saw the gold ring. Passed the coil over the area again and received a very strong 12-47 and I just knew it was the silver ring. Brushed some sand away and there was the silver ring. Both rings were within 6 inches of each other. Being it was still only 5:20am, I sent a text to Leslie to inform her of the good news. Leslie replied a little while later and was ecstatic. We then made plans to meet up in the early afternoon and she would be reunited with her rings. Upon receiving the rings back, Leslie explained that the gold ring with three stones were the birthstones of herself, her mother and father. Her mother has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Leslie had expressed her deep gratitude to me for finding her such sentimental rings.