metal detecting ring in parking lot Tag | The Ring Finders

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Katie was given Tommy’s 18 karat white and rose gold wedding band to keep safe while he headed to the hospital for a medical procedure. She decided to wear the special jewel on her index finger as she drove one child to a Vienna, Virginia private school and the other one to an Oakton, Virginia dance studio. By the time Katie completed her drop-offs, she stopped at a Starbucks drive thru to buy a cup of coffee and it was there that she realized that her husband’s very handsome wedding ring was no longer on her finger!

In a panic, the poor wife who had been entrusted with Tommy’s irreplaceable keepsake, first checked her car to see if it slipped off her finger and dropped to the floor or fell between the seats. Then, when nothing was found, she quickly
headed back to her daughter’s nearby dance studio. When nothing panned out there, she returned to her son’s day school campus to see if she could find the lost band somewhere near the drop-off gate entrance and at the school’s designated donation station where Katie handed some bags of clothes to one of the teachers. Unfortunately, the perplexed young lady had no success in recovering Tommy’s wedding day « souvenir ».

After the Oakton, Virginia spouse spent another couple of frustrating days searching for the ring in the same places as before, Katie had no choice but to leave her information about the missing ring with the school, the dance studio and at the Starbucks. A « lost and found » bulletin went out to all of the day school program parents just in case somebody happened to pick up the precious piece of property sometime later that week. Still, there was no happy breakthrough or positive leads that became of all of her diligent efforts to retrieve the runaway ring.

Katie felt very guilty for losing her spouse’s special « symbol of love ». So much so that she began looking online to rent a metal detector to further her efforts. During her search on the internet, the desperate young lady happened to stumble upon a metal detectorist directory called THE RING FINDERS – an elite international database of ring finding specialists who enjoy solving mysteries just like this one. Katie contacted me and filled me in on the entire story regarding the loss of Tommy’s ring.

Even though this particular search project did not look too promising in regards to a successful recovery (since the loss of the ring appeared to have taken place in one of three public environments), I was greatly up for the challenge and I couldn’t wait to start the search the very next morning.

When I arrived at the private school in Vienna, Virginia, I first searched Katie’s vehicle with some special search equipment. Though it was extremely cold outside with a chilling temperature of 32° Fahrenheit, I was determined to conduct a thorough investigation for Tommy’s missing ring. I ended up concluding that the band was not lost in the car.

Next, my client showed me where she walked and dropped off her little boy at the outdoor playground fence gate. Katie clearly remembered holding his lunch bag with one hand and struggling to release her young one with the other hand due to the boy having an emotionally difficult morning. We then walked over to another side of the property where my client had deposited her give-a-ways out by a designated outdoor donation station.

I held off doing any searching at the school premises until Katie oriented me over to the Oakton, Virginia dance studio and at the local Starbucks where she realized Tommy’s ring was no longer on her finger. I metal detected and scanned both of those potential search sites and unfortunately there was no sign of the wedding band at either one of those two locations.

Once I finished checking out the Starbucks drive-thru area, I returned to the school and immediately began setting up my grid tapes out on the parking lot. I first wanted to check the concrete pavement to see if the ring fell off of Katie’s finger during the time that she either carried her child to the drop off site or if it went missing while taking the bags of clothes over to the donation station. The purpose in checking the parking lot first was because later that day the entire area would be filled with cars due to an afternoon function. I wanted to make sure that I had full access to every square inch of that blacktop before visitors began to show up.

I spent at least a couple of hours out in the bitter cold weather grid searching almost the entire parking lot of the school. It was a lot of territory. The reason why I did the majority of the concrete was because the ring was heavy and it was quite possible that if it fell off, it could have rolled down the parking lot since it was on a decline. When I completed that task, I was 100% confident that the ring was not on the parking lot pavement. This did not mean that someone had already eyeballed it and picked it up sometime the last couple of days.

Next, I took my metal detector over to the patch of ground where Katie dropped off her son with the school staff. It was the last place to check before I had to wrap up the search. There were leaves and little clumps of grass here and there around the outside of the fenced in area. Not only had Katie searched that particular section already, but plenty of other parents and teachers who had gotten word about the disappearance of Tommy’s precious sentimental piece of jewelry also scanned over that same territory. Up to that point nothing was discovered by any of the good Samaritans in this particular « hot zone ». Yet, I never base my search strategies on escaping the odds. One must search everywhere just in case the lay person happens to miss the obvious areas. That’s why it’s so pertinent that people reach out to a professional metal detectorist like myself instead of trying to do the search on their own.

Well, I am so very happy to share that after metal detecting the area near the fence line where Katie dropped off her son, I eventually picked up a wonderful target signal coming from underneath some leaves over to the left of the chain link fence entrance gate. I knelt down to the ground and took out my handheld metal detector to pinpoint the exact location of where my machine detected the signal. After removing a few leaves, there it was!… I found it! Right in front of my eyes was the very handsome white and rose gold wedding band that I had been searching for for the last few hours! I did it! I successfully recovered Tommy’s lost ring! With all of the foot traffic coming and going at that drop off point, nobody ever eyeballed the long sought after « symbol of love »! Incredible! It was lying there under a few leaves for a number of days and yet It was never recovered by anyone!

When I surprised Tommy and Katie with the great news, the couple immediately reacted as if they both were in a state of shock when I pulled Tommy’s lost wedding band out of my pocket! As I handed them the irreplaceable wedding memento, the two couldn’t believe what they were staring at! Even though Katie grabbed a hold of whatever hope she could muster up when she initially hired me to search for the missing keepsake, the young lady admitted that she didn’t think that they would ever see that very special ring ever again! I am so glad that at the end of this special ring story… I was able to prove my client’s intuition to be quite wrong! I love it when it works out that way!

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