John’s Tiffany & Company Platinum Wedding Band Finally Above Ground!
A Happy Smile Returned to John’s Face as He Holds His Handsome Wedding Band!
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
I received an email from John who shared these words:
“I lost my wedding ring doing yard work Sunday afternoon and would greatly appreciate some help finding it. I’ve been trying to find it myself and last night I realized that I need more help. Losing the ring came after a particularly depressing weekend for I had to travel for a funeral and the weekend was topped off with me losing the ring. So I feel particularly distraught. Would you be able to help me with the search? Your help would be greatly appreciated.”
As you can see, John finally gave up searching for his missing Tiffany and Company platinum wedding band that he lost somewhere in his backyard. He had been working on some outdoor projects such as: raking leaves, weeding, and putting miscellaneous throwaway items including old leaves inside a tumbler composter. All of this was taking place on approximately 2 1/2 acres of land and the missing ring could have come off just about anywhere on his McLean, Virginia estate. When I called John to go over the details of the disappearance of his beloved keepsake, he said that he acquired a metal detector and searched for hours on end, but he could not recover his ring. He went all over his property detecting various target signals, but nothing turned up in regards to what he was looking for. That’s when he looked online and discovered, THE RING FINDERS. He asked when I could come out to help recover his missing ring and I told him that I had a couple of hours open later in the day to help with the search.
Later that afternoon I arrived at John’s lovely McLean, Virginia estate. He took me to the backyard and it was as large as I pictured it when we spoke on the phone. The surroundings were absolutely breathtaking. He had a large open area of grassy lawn and then there was additional acreage that extended into the woods. He took me around to all of the places that he had been working on the yard, which was pretty much everywhere because he was raking and hauling leaves and weeds over to the woods throughout his weekend of outdoor projects He showed me his compost tumbler and we knew that it was a possibility that he could have lost the ring inside of it. John recalled throwing some of the walnuts that had come down from one of the trees out into the woods. We both agreed that the loose wedding band could have slipped off his ringer at that moment.
John showed me some of the locations where he predominantly metal detected, but where he came up empty-handed. I have to admit that it was a very large stretch of territory, and there could have been all kinds of possibilities as to where that loose ring could have fallen off. Yet, I was not moved by the amount of work that was ahead of me. I have experienced too many stories where such large properties give up the jewelry sooner or later. John was not an experienced metal detectorist and he was not using a machine that was the kind of quality necessary to get this job done. Nor did he have the kind of hours working with his machine that would have helped him interpret and assist him effectively in guiding him to the correct target. We must have gone from one side of the property all the way to the other side, and he even took me back into the woods maybe 15 or 20 yards to point out places where he dragged all kinds of brush and leaves.
After finishing the tour of all of the locations where John had been doing lawn work, I returned to my car to retrieve my metal detecting equipment. John left me and went back inside the house. I started my search closer to the woods. There were several hotspots where we thought he may have lost his platinum ring, so I covered those areas first. For sections where the brush was highly dense, I used my 6 inch equinox coil on my Minelab Equinox 800 detector. In the more open areas, I used my 15 inch coil which conquers a lot of territory in a very small amount of time. When I couldn’t find the ring in one section of the woods, I moved my way over to the next, and so on. No ring turned up.
I began detecting a pathway that led from one side of the lawn to the other side through some wooded areas. I detected both sides of the pathway, but there still was no ring to be found. Because I was limited on time that particular day, I focused more on ruling out the possibility that the ring was lost in the woods. Unless he actually flicked the ring farther into areas that were just too full of brush and tree limbs, I was starting to conclude that the ring was probably lost on the main grassy lawn rather than where all of the trees were located. There would be no way that I could search all of that territory in the two or so hours that I had on that particular day. However, if I couldn’t find the ring in a matter of minutes before having to pack up my gear, I would return in the morning to continue the search. It turned out that I did not pull the ring that afternoon. By the time I had to leave to go to my next appointment, I would postpone checking the compost container until the next morning, as well as a couple of other small sections that were full of leaf piles. I did start a grid search on the main lawn in the backyard and did as much area as I could make time for, yet I was not able to find the ring. I saw plenty of places where John had dug up the ground hoping to find his lost wedding band, but there were no fresh surface finds anywhere. I would have to pack up my gear and return early the next morning. I let John know that I was heading off after I searched for a few hours. I would have to wait until the next morning to resume my search. I couldn’t wait.
I got up around 5 AM and left my house sometime around 5:30 that morning. I wanted to get back to the search site as early as I could before having to leave for my regular job. I gave myself three hours to search. It was still dark out by the time I started traveling from Maryland into Virginia. I couldn’t wait to get to John’s estate to resume the search and recovery project. He gave me permission to start detecting as soon as I arrived, so the moment that I pulled up to the property, I gathered my gear and walked back to the rear of the house and set up my detecting equipment.
My main focus at this point was to start a grid search from one section of the lawn over to the other side. I used my Equinox 800 detector with a 15 inch coil. I was able to conquer quite a bit of real estate using this “snowshoe” of a coil! Before starting the grid, I emptied out the compost unit where John had been piling leaves and miscellaneous items inside to use as fertilizer for the property. There was a possibility that the ring slipped off his finger and ended up inside the rotator, so I pulled out the contents and detected over the pile that I had made. The ring was not found in the device. Next, I started the grid search going from the farthest point of the grass line straight up towards the house and then back towards the woods again, and so on. Also, to help keep straight and consistent moves with the detector, I brought cones to mark my grid lines, so I was very methodical about how to attack the search site that morning. As I was detecting, I started seeing more and more places where John had metal detected but found nothing. I knew that he had been searching in certain places because I would get a tone indicating that there was metal in the ground and that spot would be cleared away, so I knew that it was searched very recently. John said he covered quite a bit of the property and was frustrated by the time he put the detector down and contacted me. I didn’t blame him at all for his frustration because it was a very large property. Unless he was familiar with his detector and he used a machine that was set up for this type of recovery operation, he most likely would have gone right over the ring and completely miss it.
As it turned out, after I reached my sixth or seventh grid line, I checked a particular signal that resembled a target that could very likely be a ring. The target appeared to be close to the surface, if not on top of the dirt hidden in the grass. In addition to those signs, the tone was exactly what I was looking for! There’s a certain “skipping” sound that you’re looking for when searching for recently lost items. That “bounce” in the sound gives you a good idea that that particular metal is settled above ground, or at least near to. I immediately knelt down and took out my pinpointer to examine the target site. Once I zeroed in on the piece of metal, my eyes beheld the very object that I had been searching for since yesterday! I found John’s beloved platinum wedding band! What a delight it was to be able to find it within 45 minutes of my second visit to this beautiful McLean property! I could not have been more thrilled at that very moment!
John’s platinum ring was discovered close to the center point between the house and where the wooded area began. If you are looking at the back of the house from the lawn, the ring was lined up with the left side of the rear of the house, half way down towards the forest. I couldn’t wait to share the happy news with the owner of this very handsome wedding band! I marked the spot where I found the ring and then I planned out how I was going to reveal the ring discovery to John. That was a fantastic morning for all of us! John was extremely happy with my performance in being able to find the missing wedding band and return it to him. When I showed him the location of where I found the ring, he was perplexed because he knew that he had searched that entire section. I knew he had because I saw all of his dig marks. But, I explained to him that without the proper training and utilizing a quality detector, it’s like trying to find a one inch sized object with your eyes blindfolded and your ears muted! It’s nearly impossible! I was so happy to help him! What a wonderful way to start off my day! I left McLean, Virginia so very satisfied and thrilled that I could help John with getting his ring back!
If you would like to watch the SEARCH VIDEO and RING REVEAL pertaining to this story, the YOUTUBE link will be provided shortly. To receive the notification letting you know when the video is uploaded to YOUTUBE, feel free to SUBSCRIBE to BRIAN’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL by typing: THE RING RETURNER.
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEO YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS WHEN THIS LATEST SEARCH VIDEOIS UPLOADED! BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEOS ARE FOUND ON HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – THE RING RETURNER.
John’s Missing Wedding Band Shining its Handsome Gold Once Again!
Rachel and John Smiling with Great Relief that the Irreplaceable Gold Wedding Band was Safely Returned to the Hand of its Owner!
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
I received an email from a woman named Rachel who was contacting me on behalf of her husband, John, who lost his gold wedding band in the backyard of their home in Springfield, Virginia. He, his father and brother were all working on a construction project on the day of the disappearance of the ring. At the end of one of their project days, John was putting away some of his tools and upon taking off his gloves, he noticed that his ring was no longer on his finger. He was pretty certain that the wedding band was somewhere in the yard or near the rear entrance to his house. There was a small chance that the band fell off of his finger inside the home, but less likely. With much confidence he recalled seeing the ring on his finger at the beginning of the day when his family members assisted him in building a garage towards the back of his property. By the end of their hard labor, towards evening time, John noticed that the wedding band was gone. He searched and searched but John could not find his beloved keepsake anywhere. He and his wife Rachel raked up plenty of leaves and threw them into a fire pit, hoping to capture the little guy. Yet, their clever attempt eventually failed, as well. I believe the family even tried to locate the ring using a metal detector, but that too lead to no avail.
When all other options were exhausted, and hours upon hours of searching ended up in wasted time, Rachel looked online for further help. This is when THE RING FINDERS would come to the rescue! Rachel found me on the directory and immediately sent me an email sharing what had happened with the loss of her husband’s wedding band. I immediately responded back and eventually we had a conversation on the phone, reviewing all of the details. It was soon after that that we scheduled a time for me to come out later that evening to attempt to recover the missing wedding band for John.
By the time I arrived at John and Rachel’s property, night had fallen. I would not be hindered at all by the late hour that I was starting the search because I always carry all of the necessary night gear to work at any hour of night. I met Rachel at her front door and eventually she introduced me to John, his father and also his brother who were all working diligently on the construction project in the backyard. They had special floodlights fastened to the 2 x 4 support beams, along with all kinds of table saws and power tools that were spread out over their large work environment.
John showed me all of the places that he had been doing construction work and yard clean-up. He would take pieces of wood that were no longer needed for the project and toss the scraps to one side of the lawn. He also bundled up bags of weeds and leaves and tossed them to one of the corners of the property. He showed me the various places where he was walking to and from the house, along with the areas where he was working with power tools near the construction site. When he realized that he had lost the ring, he started raking leaves and then tossing them into the fire pit which had a metal grid base at the bottom so that the ring, if found, would be discovered somewhere on the grid. However, as shared earlier, the ring was never found. He took me to the pit and showed me where all of the leaves were thrown into the center of his clever invention.
I would say the backyard was about 35 yards by 25 yards. Pretty much every corner and side of the yard could be a possibility as to where the ring ended up. The one positive bit of information that I acquired was that the family never had the weeds or leaves picked up by the recycling truck! I asked them to make sure that no throwaway items ended up in front of the house (which included trash, as well) until the recovery efforts were completed.
Once we finished the backyard tour, John returned to working on his construction project with his family members while I geared up and started my search. First, I started a grid line on the far right side of the backyard and continued moving in straight lines in a 10 by 25 foot area. I was picking up all kinds of signals, but nothing came up on the surface as being a men’s classic wedding band. I looked through various places that John had taken me to but the ring still did not turn up.
During the three hour search, I checked out all of the possible spots where John’s ring could have fallen off of his finger and it still could not be found. At that point, I knew that I needed to start searching in sections that John had not introduced me to when we took the stroll around the property. I chose new areas close by to where he had discarded various items that he had no longer needed for his project. I then searched a debris pile of leaves and weeds that were taken from one area to another. As I covered those leftover possibilities around the backyard, I could hear and view the three gentlemen working very hard in hammering nails into the partially finished garage. We all had a purpose back there in the yard that evening, and my mission was to get that ring back onto John’s finger which I was determined to do so!
In those few hours that I had been detecting, I had meticulously covered almost every section of the real estate, checking and rechecking every possible target signal that was made available to me. At that point, I had only one more spot to check out before I had to make a decision as to whether I should start new grids and re-cover all of the territory that I had previously searched earlier or call it a night and return to the property in the next day or two to resume the search.
I can’t tell you how many times I find the client’s ring in the very last possible area that is left for me to check. I hear this from other detectorists all the time. At the very last movement on the clock, before time runs out, all of a sudden, the item turns up! That’s exactly what happened in this case! My last spot to go over was located adjacent to the construction project but farthest away from the main house. I started a very small grid search between the neighbor’s fence and where the concrete edge of the newly constructed garage was located. It probably was a section no more than 10 feet by 20 feet. By the time I resolved to search that final uncharted spot, the men had already turned in for the night. So, I was now all alone out there, hoping to pull this ring in my final search spot.
Just as I was completing my final pass of the grid, I got an excellent signal that was extremely shallow and it had a bit of a bounce to the tone that I was hearing in my headphones. The Minelab Equinox 800 that I was using gave me a solid number on the screen (I will post the VDI number after reviewing the video), which was in the range of numbers that I was looking for for this yellow 14 karat gold wedding band. I got down on my knees and lowered the detector and placed it to one side. Then, I pulled out my pinpointer and examined the target area.
Immediately, as my fingers moved through the blades of grass and leaves, I saw the yellow gold wedding band peeping out from below! I found it at last! It was a few feet away from the edge of the newly constructed concrete foundation that the men had laid in the last month or so. John must have taken off his gloves nearby and the ring bounced on to the concrete floor, and then rolled off into the grass. I was so excited! This was the very last section that I could check before I needed to start all over again and re-cover my steps. I couldn’t be happier for John and for Rachel, as well!
After metal detecting for several hours and then finally the hidden treasure is discovered, it’s all worth the diligent efforts and countless potential targets that were investigated over all of that time! I was wearing a very happy smile on my face as I took some pictures and packed up my gear before revealing the good news to John and Rachel! Believe me, the couple was beyond excited to learn that John would be
wearing his wedding band soon enough… as soon as it was resized to fit his ring finger again!
If you would like to watch the SEARCH VIDEO and RING REVEAL pertaining to this story, the YOUTUBE link will be provided shortly. To receive the notification letting you know when the video is uploaded to YOUTUBE, feel free to SUBSCRIBE to BRIAN’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL by typing: THE RING RETURNER.
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEO YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS WHEN THIS LATEST SEARCH VIDEOIS UPLOADED! BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEOS ARE FOUND ON HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – THE RING RETURNER.
Josh’s 14 Karat White Gold, 1/2 Carat Diamond Stud Earring and 14 Karat White Gold Backing
Josh’s Handsome Stud Earring and Backing Sparkling Again Above the Earth Once More!
Josh and Adriana Celebrating the Unbelievable Sight of the Lost Earring and Backing that were Presumed Gone Forever!
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
I will never forget the phone call that I received from a young man who was desperately seeking my help to recover something very special to him. As I was shopping at the local Walmart, Josh shared with me what happened the day earlier when he was playing a football game in Frederick, Maryland. It was supposed to be a fun event for he and his friends who gathered on this particular field from cities located as far away as ones in Pennsylvania and Northern Maryland. The two teams placed the boundary cones on the middle school sports field and marked off a 50 yard by 30 yard football field section, with 10 additional yards for each end zone. The afternoon was filled with much excitement and thrill until the game was finished, and Josh realized that one of his two white gold diamond stud earrings (and the gold backing) had gone missing. Instead of him taking off and heading back to Pennsylvania where he resided, he resolved to find his very sentimental piece of jewelry that was picked out by his wife Adriana. It was a very bold task that he was embarking upon to try to eyeball a tiny object like a stud earring in the midst of so many yards to search on that field. Anything that small would have settled down into the underworld of grass, completely unseen by the naked eye. Josh’s admirable efforts led to no avail. He eventually left the football field completely defeated as he headed back home. None of his teammates had any luck in finding the stud diamond earring either. If you want to learn just how determined Josh was in trying to get his keepsake back on his ear, then you must know that he and his very supportive mother returned to the field once more that evening, driving all the way from Pennsylvania (which is a 45 minute commute back to Frederick Maryland) to do a second search. The two of them brought flashlights and scanned the entire football field that Josh was playing on earlier that day. Again, their efforts were futile. There was just too much territory and the object that they were looking for was way too small to locate within all of the blades of grass. There was nothing more that he could do but to return back home empty handed once again.
It was sometime after Josh arrived back at his house from the unsuccessful recovery attempt that he and his wife researched information on the internet regarding metal detecting. One of the links that popped up happened to be The Ring Finders directory. The couple had never heard of this company that provides a resource to locate a local Ring Finder metal detectorist member who is able to search for people’s lost items. My name happened to surface when they sought to find a detectorist in the Frederick, Maryland area where the earring was lost. Josh got on his smartphone and immediately called me to request my help.
It would be unfair of me if I didn’t share a particular moment that I had while talking with this disappointed young man on the phone about losing his beloved earring. You see, when Josh first started talking to me about his football game in Frederick, Maryland, and the fact that he lost something out on the field where he was playing, I had no idea that what he had lost was not a ring. Most of what I recover happens to be rings, but I also search for plenty of other objects including: smartphones, watches, hearing aids, bracelets, other type of bangles, chains and pendants, and lots more. I will hunt for anything that has metal attached to it. If the object is worth something to somebody else, then I am alright about going off to search for it. Josh innocently forgot to mention what it was that he specifically lost until much later in our conversation. When I started asking questions about the type of ring that had disappeared on the playing field, Josh corrected me and shared that he didn’t lose a ring, but rather a 14 karat white gold, ½ carat stud diamond earring! You should have seen my face at the department store’s checkout counter when I learned of this! I smiled with utter amusement at the realization of what this gentleman was asking me to do for him! A tiny object like his earring, lost somewhere on a football field that was 2100 square yards wide, was not likely to ever be recovered! I truly love a great challenge, but this one was way outside the box! Most detectorists would never even attempt to tackle this recovery scenario because the odds of finding something this small on that much property without having a hint of where the lost earring may have fallen, was astronomical! It would just end up being a big waste of time. However, while Josh was still on the phone, I gave it a quick thought by saying to myself within, ‘Wouldn’t this be a great story if I could somehow pull that little stud earring off of the field and return it back to the ear that it belonged to?!’ ‘What if I could metal detect that much surface area and actually overcome such odds against me with trying to recover that piece of jewelry?’ I played with the idea in my head and at the end of my moment of day dreaming, I absolutely fell in love with the idea of going after the earring! I didn’t even know if my detector would be able to pick up that little bit of white gold coming from his ½ carat diamond stud earring setting. It’s hard enough to get a strong enough signal to recover a lady’s petite white gold band, let alone something this tiny. And I wasn’t even sure the angle of where the post had settled in the grass which would certainly help to determine the type of signal strength that would be picked up by my detector. The backing to the earring would also be comprised of 14 karat white gold. Finding both pieces would be nearly impossible to accomplish. However, I didn’t want to tell Josh that I could not recover his sentimental piece without first giving it a shot and see what I might be able to find on that field. I love “the thrill of the kill” and this hunt would certainly be one of my top prized stories if I could pull it off! Without a blink of the eye, I agreed to help Josh!
Josh and I scheduled a time to meet the following evening at the middle school where he lost his stud earring. Losing this piece of jewelry weighed so heavily upon him that he was willing to give up some of his son’s birthday celebration time in order to show me where he was playing football the day that he lost his earring. I should mention that when I asked Josh about his whereabouts the day he lost the diamond and asked when was the last time that he remembered wearing the stud, everything was a bit fuzzy in his memory. He could not specifically remember if it was on his ear when he left his house to go play football. He checked his video camera at the front door but the door camera did not show evidence of whether or not he left the house with the earring on or not. I asked him to keep searching around in his car and also in the house just to make sure that he didn’t miss any spots where it may have fallen off his gear before he even went to the football field. He agreed and did as I had suggested before we met that evening.
Both of us arrived at the school sometime around 7 p.m. I had the opportunity to meet the birthday boy who turned sixteen. From the parking lot, Josh took me across one field and then eventually we reached the particular field where he was playing. He started to point out all of the white chalk lines that the guys used as end zones and sidelines. On the day of their game, cones were set up on one side of the field to mark off the width of the parameter. As I shared above, they played 30 yards from left to right and 70 yards from end zone to end zone. Essentially the dimensions were 1/2 of a pro football field. Due to the fact that Josh had no way of measuring 30 yards from left to right (the night I was detecting), he estimated the approximate location of where the cones were placed to indicate the left sideline. He stood in a particular spot and then I counted a certain number of feet until I reached where he stood to show how wide his playing field was that day. I counted 30 yards in total. Josh was fairly confident that what I measured was the width of their football field that day.
Once I had all of the dimensions, I wanted to do a test on Josh’s one remaining stud earring. I needed to get a reading on my metal detector as to the type of signal his earring would give off. Then, I could search for that type of metal in the field that would resemble the same reading. In addition to that, I wanted to increase the sensitivity level on my detector and see just how high I needed to crank it up in order to capture the signal coming from the lost earring in the field.
The three of us huddled together on the grass to conduct the tests. Josh carefully took his only remaining stud earring out of his ear and placed it on the grass so that I could swing my metal detector over the earring. Surprisingly, the Minelab Equinox 800 detector wouldn’t even recognize the metal. Because the diamond stud setting and post were so small, there was very little precious metal for the detector to read. Even I was taken back by this outcome.
I knew that most studs, if they were below the ground, would barely be readable at all. But I was testing an earring that was above ground and I was still getting nothing. Then, I took out my Garrett handheld pinpointer and placed the end of the detector on top of the earring. The result was just as surprising, if not more so than when I swung the detector over the white gold. The 14 karat white gold piece would not even react to the metal unless it was positioned in a certain direction. I couldn’t believe it. All of this was documented on video which I will publish in the next few months.
Things did not look good for an effective search to take place at that point. I couldn’t read the earring on the Equinox 800 and my pinpointer was pretty much useless. I wasn’t sure what to do at that point. Josh and his son were looking at me for answers and they frankly were dumbfounded themselves. At that moment, things even got worse. After I recalibrated my detector with certain adjustments that I hoped would help pick up the target signal from the earring, I placed the detector down towards the ground and I realized that I couldn’t find the stud earring that had been tested moments earlier. The three of us had not moved an inch since we started testing the piece of jewelry, so it was still in front of us on the ground, but our eyes couldn’t spot it! It went completely missing! I asked the two fellows to help me focus in on where the earring was and they too could not find it. Using my pinpointer was completely useless, so we needed to find it by eyesight only. I looked at Josh, and I said to him, “Now you have a really good idea of how almost impossible this is going to be to find your earring out there on the field. If we can’t find the sister earring that was just placed in front of us and it then disappears, how much more is it an impossibility for me to find the other earring out there!” Josh totally got the logic that I was conveying and he realized how bad we had it in trying to recover the earring.
Eventually, after 10 minutes of searching, Josh’s son found the test earring and we were all relieved that we didn’t have to spend any more time looking for the jewelry that had gone missing. Josh got a very good picture of how impossible this would be to recover something this small unless I came up with some other technique to help me detect the earring.
Figuring out a new strategy with how I could find Josh’s sentimental earring was my top priority. I thought about it for a bit and then a new idea came to mind. Thanks to Chris Turner, the CEO of The Ring Finders directory, for publishing his own search videos, I came up with an alternative plan that could possibly help me with our search. I recalled watching a video that Chris had shot regarding a stud earring that he was trying to recover for someone during the summer. He was getting so much interference from the electrical power lines above the property that he took his metal detector and tried to detect with a setting called: Gold Mode. It’s a very special setting that is used for mining gold. Usually, the metal detectorist will not need this setting because it’s not the usual type of hunting that most of us do on a regular basis. Though the technique proved to fail for Chris because of the constant electrical interference he was experiencing, his idea was filed in my head for a future time as this one. Chris ended up finding the earring that he was looking for by implementing a different strategy. He ended up stretching out his entire body on the ground like a sniper, scanning the yard with a handheld pinpointer like a windshield wiper until he finally located the jewel! Incredible! A must-see-video on his YouTube Channel called: The Ring Finders.
I told the guys what my next plan was and I immediately set my detector to Gold Mode. Then, I swung the coil over the diamond stud earring and I did get a signal! It was barely anything, but I did in fact get a reading of the earring! This was my only technique for trying to recover Josh’s missing sentimental piece. I would have to go very slowly over the ground and have the coil as close to the surface as possible. The problem with using this particular mode was that I would end up picking up signals coming from all sorts of other targets. The numbers that kept coming up on my screen were in the range of Number 1 and 2. I would end up getting a lot of trash that would be in that range, but I had no choice but to try this setting out on the field. After a couple of more tests with this function, Josh picked up the earring, safely placed it back in his ear and the three of us would say our goodbyes shortly thereafter.
I stayed on the field in the dark with my headlamp powered on while Josh and his birthday boy walked back to their car to head back to Pennsylvania to celebrate their son’s birthday. In the meantime, I would spend the next three hours grid searching the field for the missing earring. I moved very slowly forward with slow swings from left to right and back again, hoping that each signal that I picked up would potentially be the stud that I was looking for. I was also looking for the backing piece of the earring, as well. Once I finished the first grid line, I headed back the other direction and started the next one. The search was tedious, with tons of target signals coming up on my screen because of the type of mode that I was working with. Every signal that was in the Number 1 and 2 range would sound off that familiar signal through my headphones. Then I would take my handheld detector and place it on the ground where the signal was coming from and I would see if I could perhaps isolate and identify the target. I figured that if I couldn’t find the item with the pinpointer, it was either that the target was too far down in the ground or I may have found the earring because the pinpointer was having a hard time picking up the signal of the test earring unless it was in a particular angle.
I searched and searched and still there was no sign of Josh’s belonging. I have to admit that I wasn’t enjoying this type of hunt. There was no way of knowing for sure whether or not I walked right past the earring already. It’s even easy to overstep a larger object like a ring, so therefore it was very probable that I could have already missed the target and wasted the rest of those hours in a search that appeared to be futile. Still, I didn’t give up and I resolved to continue my search efforts until I had little left in my “energy tank”.
Another problem that I forgot to mention earlier was that the ground was covered with droplets from an earlier rainstorm, so everything was glistening and sparkling from my headlamp light source that was hitting the water and bouncing off reflections of light. It was a visual nightmare to try to eyeball a piece of jewelry that small with everything else that looked like a small diamond reflecting light from beneath the grass.
I think I may have covered half of the field before calling it quits that night. I felt that I did an extremely tight search with my gridlines. I also felt that the speed in which I used to swing the detector was slow enough that I shouldn’t have missed much metal that was on the surface. Again, there were so many signals that read off the same numbers as the gold earring. With everything I had to detect and pinpoint, I really could have missed something in between all of those numerous targets.
One other thing I forgot to mention earlier. The sound coming from the detector was extremely irritating because of the mode that I set the detector to. The higher the sensitivity that I set it to, the louder the hum-noise sounded off in my ears and it was becoming unbearable to listen to as I continued deep into my search. I was glad to wrap things up because I had nothing left in me at all. I have to admit that I was extremely frustrated and I had no intention of coming back to this field even though I hadn’t finished searching the entire perimeter. I just felt like it was just too much for me and I wasn’t even sure if I could pick up the target signal accurately since it was so faint with the test earring. And nobody knew if the earring was actually lost on that field! I believe when I started heading back to the car, I had already searched for about three hours. I packed my gear up and left the school property with the intention of never returning! I wanted to get on with other searches that were much more reasonable to carry out and not something as crazy as this search and recovery operation. I was no longer excited about the challenge due to the obstacles that I had faced with the uncertainties that were constantly flowing through my mind.
As I drove home, I texted Josh to let him know that I had left the field and that I would give him an update the following day. I would reach out to Josh in the morning. However, I got no response back from him due to a family crisis that he had to endure for the next several weeks. My intention was to tell him directly that I would not be able to return to Frederick to resume my search, but after a couple days had passed, I refreshed my attitude about the whole situation and decided to give it another go around. It kept bothering me that unless I tried to find Josh’s earring, I really believed that nobody else would have ever found it for him and it would be lost forever on that football field. I truly did not want that outcome for Josh and I felt like I needed to finish what I started. Then, if I had no success, I could then walk away knowing that I did everything I could to recover his property. So, I sent a text to Josh sometime mid-week letting him know that I would be heading out the following day to continue my search for the missing earring.
By the time that I arrived back at the middle school later in the week, it was dark outside again but this time there was no evening dew on the ground and everything was dry. This was a huge advantage for me because I could identify metallic objects on the ground including anything that appeared to look like glass that showed some form of reflection of light – like a diamond!
With my headlamp on and detector in hand, I started searching at the very location where I had quit the other night. Because I then had a better understanding of how many feet I needed to count from the chalk lines out to one side, I counted 30 feet to the left and put orange cones up to identify the left sideline of the football field which Josh had set up with his friends. I then knew exactly how many yards I had to search before I completed the entire field.
It’s important to also remember that the entire time that I was searching for Josh’s earring, there wasn’t 100% confidence that the earring was ever lost on the field. There still was a chance that it was somewhere in his house, in his vehicle, or even perhaps on the grass leading from the parking lot to the field. There was no way of knowing for certain where the diamond came off. So while I was searching so diligently for this tiny object that was supposedly hiding somewhere on the surface of grass, there was always that question mark of whether or not the jewel had ever gotten lost during his game in the first place. The only fact that I could stand upon was that it was most likely lost as a result of being tackled, whereby the earring was hit and then it popped off Josh’s ear. It was the most likely theory.
I continued my search, swinging the detector from left to right at a very slow speed as I did a few days earlier. Having the machine set up in Gold Mode provided the only opportunity to detect something as small as this 14 karat white gold earring. Like I shared before, the hum coming from the machine into the headphones was quite annoying, but I had to put up with it in order to use this function properly. Every time I got a VDI (visual identification) Number 1 or 2 on the screen, I pinpointed the location of where the coil was picking up the object and identified the source of the signal. All of my finds came up negative.
As the hours passed on, I continued with diligence in searching every single signal that was registering on my detector and I was determined to finish what I set out to do for the sake of Josh and his wife Adriana who gave her husband this very special gift. All of the signals that I was picking up led to no discoveries of either the earring or the backing. I recall praying as I swung the coil back and forth, just asking God to help me by providing me with the ability to find the earring and to make the impossible somehow possible! If one could think about how many gold stud posts and diamond gold settings would equal one gold ring; that’s how much easier this search could have been had I searched for a gold band. It was absolutely a needle in a haystack!
Target after target signal that I investigated turned out to be nothing at all. I pulled up pieces of aluminum and very small tiny objects that were in the range of what I was looking for. However, I did not find any gold earrings. Eventually, I got to the second to last grid line and in a matter of minutes I would be on the last pass which was 50 yards in length. If someone were to predict that I was about ready to find the 14 karat white gold stud diamond earring at the backstretch of my search, I would have most likely told them that they were a false prophet! I certainly have found rings and other objects at the very tail end of my recovery efforts. It always surprises me how those stories tend to end up successful at the 11:59 position on the clock! I certainly did not think that the conclusion to this search would resemble that kind of plot ending! Yet, a surprise was waiting in store for me!
As I continued detecting, I knew how close I was to wrapping things up and that it looked pretty grim for me to discover the missing earring. I even analyzed my search techniques and asked myself if I had perhaps detected over the jewelry at some point during the last 1,995 square yards of detecting. It was quite possible, yet I went so slow and was so careful with making sure that I stopped at every single signal in the range of this stud earring, that I felt pretty confident that I had successfully covered all of the yardage up to that point towards the end of the search. Again, I kept myself focused and said to myself, ‘I came here for a purpose which was to finish what I started and I am going to keep hoping for the result of finding Josh’s earring until I’m done with this search attempt.’
14 Karat White Gold and 1/2 Carat Diamond Reunited Together Again!
Eventually I got to the location in my search where I was about 20 feet away from completing the second to last grid line which would then be 50 yards in length remaining. After that last pass, I would have completed my search of the entire football field that Josh and his friends had marked off for their game. Just as I neared the end of that second to last line, I got another target signal which was no different than any of the other ones that I had to bend down to pinpoint before. Still, like with all the others, I knelt down to observe the target signal that I was getting and applied the pinpointer to the spot where the coil was reading the piece of metal in the grass. I looked at the depth meter on my detector screen and it told me that the object was just below the ground or on top of the earth. That didn’t mean too much to me because I had picked up all kinds of little objects that didn’t pan out to be anything. Just as I locked-in on the exact spot of where the target was located, my eyes immediately focused in on what appeared to be a small silver object that was laying sideways between the blades of grass! I then looked even more closely, and to my ultimate amazement and complete unbelief, I saw Josh’s treasured 14 karat white gold, one-half carat diamond earring hidden in the grass! I couldn’t believe it! I was blown away by what I was looking at! After all of the hours that I had been searching during the first evening and right up to the end of this second search effort, there it was, right at the invisible edge of the football field sideline! Nothing could describe accurately just what was going through me when I knew at that point that I had found Josh’s earring! It was too good to be true! It was a dream and that dream actually came true! Knowing that I set off on a mission to do something that was so far outside of the box in trying to find something this small on this much real estate, and that I pulled it off – there was just nothing like that feeling of excitement! I want to give credit where credit is due, which is that I believe the Lord helped me pull this search off! He gave me the abilities necessary to continue on, persevere and not give up, keep the focus, and apply the methods I used to effectively search for and ultimately recover the missing jewel from the huge piece of real estate!
I picked up the stud earring and stared at the beautiful diamond that was sparkling in the light as I was observing it! This piece of jewelry that was made up of a valuable stone and precious metal was going back to its owner and would eventually be worn on his ear soon enough! It wouldn’t be left out there on that field, to be trampled over and eventually buried inches in the dirt, serving absolutely no purpose! I found it! I really did find it! Here I was in total darkness with just my headlamp lighting the way! It was just me, all alone out there on that desolate field, celebrating the discovery of something so special! It really was thrilling! I knew at that very moment that I had not missed a single inch of territory! Upon looking for the lost piece of jewelry, I was so encouraged to realize that my meticulous grid searching in Gold Mode was perfectly done and that I had not overshot the very target that I was after! Springboarding off of that thought came another crazy one. That is, that it was quite possible that with my success of finding the earring, the white gold backing to its counterpart may be somewhere in the vicinity of where the earring had fallen off Josh’s ear. The backing had to come off first in order for the earring to eventually slip off of Josh’s ear. Therefore, it was quite possible that the backing was most likely not detected yet by my Equinox 800 and it could be still in the path of my remaining yards to search! I got totally excited about the idea that I might in fact find the backing during this last stretch of detecting. Now that I had recovered the most important item of the two, this would be the cherry on the top if I could pull off another find!
Brian, Josh and Adriana Partying It Up Knowing that the Search for the Missing Jewelry was Over! The Stud Earring was Back Home for Good!
I wasn’t going to leave that field until I covered every last inch of the football field that Josh had marked off last week. I may have searched 10 or 15 yards at the beginning stage of detecting the last grid line when I got another signal that was registering in the 1’s and 2’s. This time, I couldn’t wait to see what it was that I was picking up on my detector. Could it be the backing? Or was it another piece of trash like the handful that I had in my pouch pocket? I was about ready to find out, and to my shock again, it would not be disappointing! I got back down on the ground with my pinpointer, approaching the location of where this object was resting, and yes, once again, I hit gold! I found the backing! I couldn’t believe it! Yes, I found the 14 karat white gold backing to the earring! I was simply overjoyed at this discovery! It was incredible! It was absolutely fantastic to find even the backing to this earring! Most people would not have even taken the time and the effort to attempt a recovery like this because it was just too grueling and too time-consuming to detect every single signal in Gold Mode! This was not normal metal detecting by any means! I could not believe that I found the backing and yet it was a true reality! I was pump fisting and yelling out loud, “Yes! Yes! I can’t believe it! Yes, I found it!” I was praising the Lord and thanking Him for my abilities to find both pieces of gold! It was truly an amazing moment for me to experience something quite like this!
I stayed out there on that pitch dark field for a while, taking photos, video and commenting about the happiness that I was experiencing at that moment. Just thinking about the fact that I was so close to the end of the search parameter and that I was able to pull both pieces of gold off of the football field, was just an incredible thing for me to think about! What are the odds of this discovery? If I had placed the cones closer in and Josh did not give me a proper estimated distance from the chalk line extended out 30 feet from it, I may have undershot the search and would not have ever found the earring. Generally, I will search farther out from the parameter that is given to me so it’s possible that I still would have found the gold, but the techniques I was using to find such small objects was truly amazing with the results that I came away with that night! I kept thinking of how I was originally not going to return to the middle school field to attempt a second recovery and I was beyond happy that I chose to stick it out and continue to try to help Josh recover this earring with one more attempt! Wow! It was just awesome! I packed up my things and joyfully headed back to the car, thinking only thoughts of amazement and how blown away I was to find the earring and its backing!
I believe that by the time I got to the car it was nearing 10 p.m. I wanted to surprise Josh with my findings, so I eventually called him to see if he was still up since he told me that he was a night owl. However, I didn’t get any response. Eventually, I would surprise him with the good news and both he and his wife would be just as shocked as I was when I pulled his two pieces of jewelry from that field! It certainly was a fun moment to reveal my finds with the couple!
If you would like to see the search video and the moment that I revealed the missing earring and its backing to Josh, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel at the link below.
I will never forget this search and the amazing finish to what was one of the most difficult search efforts that I had ever tackled. Nothing could compare to the type of excitement that I was handed as a result of successfully finding Josh’s gold diamond earring and its backing, as well! As I drove home from surprising Josh and his wife Adriana with what I was able to recover, I hoped inside that I would have more of these types of challenges in the future. However, for the time being, I wished my next few recovery missions would not involve something of this magnitude…at least for a while!
What a search and what a fantastic finish!
If you would like to watch the SEARCH VIDEO and RING REVEAL pertaining to this story, the YOUTUBE link will be provided shortly. To receive the notification letting you know when the video is uploaded to YOUTUBE, feel free to SUBSCRIBE to BRIAN’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL by typing: THE RING RETURNER.
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEO YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS WHEN THIS LATEST SEARCH VIDEOIS UPLOADED! BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEOS ARE FOUND ON HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – THE RING RETURNER.
Toni’s 14 Karat White Gold, 1 Carat Diamond Family Heirloom with Surrounding Diamonds Engagement Ring
Toni’s Beautiful Family Heirloom Diamond Engagement Ring!
After Searching for Toni’s Engagement Until 1 A.M., Brian Rudolph Returns the Elegant Keepsake to Its Happy and Overjoyed Owner!
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
It was a busy day on the farm for Toni and her fiancé Clay. They were working on all kinds of tasks at the homestead before having to head out to do some errands in their town near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Because Toni didn’t want to damage or even possibly lose her precious white gold, 1 carat diamond engagement ring, she gave it to her soon-to-be husband for safekeeping. Clay took the band and carefully placed it in his shirt pocket. Then, the couple partnered together to carry a few chicken coops and load them into the back of Clay’s pickup truck so that they could drop them off somewhere later that afternoon. Next, while Toni was inside doing some house work, Clay hopped on his riding lawnmower and cut the grass in the front yard and on the sides of the house.
After a few other loose ends were taken care of on the property, the engaged couple jumped into their pickup truck and headed down their long driveway towards town. As they were nearing the edge of the property to turn onto the main road, a United States Postal Service truck was coming towards them and ended up striking Clay and Toni’s vehicle. Immediately, they pulled over to the side of their farmland driveway and exchanged information with the postal driver. Then, both vehicles drove towards the farmhouse where Clay and Toni gathered some additional information for the USPS delivery man and for their insurance companies. It was around that point in time when Clay realized that the engagement ring that Toni had given him to hold was missing from his shirt pocket. Immediately a search ensued for the rest of that afternoon. Unfortunately, they could not find the ring anywhere on the property. They even checked the pickup truck just in case the ring flew out of his pocket when the collision occurred with the postal service truck. Still, nothing turned up. Eventually they left the farm to drop off the chicken coops and then returned back home to continue their search. The couple spent all of their time looking on their hands and knees across their entire lawn, searching every inch of the driveway and inside Clay’s pickup truck. They also searched everywhere in the house just in case the engagement ring came out of Clay’s pocket when he might have leaned forward to pick something up or possibly when he tied his shoes. Neither one of them had any luck finding Toni’s beloved family heirloom engagement ring in and around the farmhouse. The two of them were completely dumbfounded by the disappearance of this ring. The original purpose for giving it to Clay was for safekeeping and neither one of them thought that the ring that they were trying to secure would actually go missing! The only other place that the ring could have ended up beyond their property was the location where the couple dropped off the chicken coops later that afternoon. Clay hoped that the ring did not fall out of his truck when he opened the door to climb out. He reached out to the people who owned the property where the coops were delivered, but they didn’t find the ring upon checking their driveway. The whole ordeal was quite perplexing.
Hours of searching turned into a couple of days of the same unsuccessful attempts to find the missing gem. Still no engagement ring to be found anywhere. Clay resorted to using a metal detector to help in their search efforts, but nothing turned up except coins, soda can pull-tabs, pieces of scrap metal and miscellaneous trash. That’s about the time that Clay’s beloved fiancé, Toni, reached out to me after learning about The Ring Findersdirectory online. She read some of my success stories on the directory’s website, as well as viewed a few of my search videos. Ironically, Toni watched me recover a ring for a young lady who she went to high school with a couple of years back. What a small world! They both currently live in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I had found her friend’s ring out in the Atlantic Ocean just two weeks before she was getting married in Gettysburg, very close to where Toni and Clay resided!
Once Toni was convinced that I could provide the best service in helping the couple find their sentimental keepsake, she immediately called me and we talked on the phone for a while, reviewing all of the backstory of the ring’s disappearance. She said that if her fiancé had no luck in finding her engagement ring by the end of the day, she would call me back and we would set up a time for me to come out and try to find it for them. As it turned out, I did receive another call back from her. The next evening I was on my way to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to search for her beloved diamond engagement ring!
As I drove to Gettysburg, I had plenty of warm feelings within as I reflected on my recent trips to the same area. I attended the wedding of Toni’s two classmates, Hannah and Derek Bush in the middle of August. Hannah is the one that I found her engagement ring for, 40 yards out in the Atlantic Ocean during her bachelorette party weekend in Ocean City, Maryland. After finding it for the relieved bride, the couple was kind enough to invite me to their wedding! I then returned a couple of weeks later to Gettysburg to be a part of a local television news story on channel ABC27 regarding the ring search and successful recovery. Now, I was driving back to the area for a third time, just a week after that television interview! Those were happy moments and with this new search, I was hoping to add to my successes by finding this couple’s ring for them, as well!
After traveling down old country roads and through a lot of farm country, I finally arrived at Clay and Toni’s farm. As I pulled into their long driveway, I saw the silo in the distance, along with barns and animal pens. There was a large cornfield on one end of their large property and the couple’s farmhouse was off to the other side. It was a lot of fun hearing the sounds of the cows and some other animals that were outside and tucked away in the barn for the night. What I really enjoyed was seeing all of the cats that lived on the farm! They were walking here and there, sitting and sleeping on this and on that! Every so often I heard a few sweet “meow” sounds off in the distance! Also, with my headlamp powered on, I would constantly see pairs of glowing eyes under the vehicles, by the trees, bushes, as well as a few felines peeping out of some crevices next to the farmhouse! They were adorable kitties and they kept me coming throughout the night!
Once I parked, I met the couple who were desperate to get Toni’s ring back. They showed me all of the spots where Clay had been working in the yard and the truck that he was driving on the day that Toni’s prized possession disappeared. I encouraged the couple to keep searching inside the house, pulling up couch cushions and looking under furniture just in case the ring popped out of Clay’s shirt pocket in the house on the day that it went missing. They had already spent a lot of time searching their place, but I still encouraged them to keep an open mind about continually looking around the inside of their house. Once we covered all of the possible places where the ring could have disappeared, the couple returned to the home while I went back to my car and pulled out all of my metal detecting gear to start the search.
The time was around 9:30 p.m. by the time I was ready to start detecting. With my headlamp on and my metal detector in hand, I began roaming the area of the yard where Clay and Toni were picking up the chicken coops and bringing them over to the truck. I wanted to see if the ring had fallen out of his pocket when he leaned forward to pick up the coops. Though I found some potential targets, there was no ring in that location. Next, I metal detected the backyard and side yard where Clay was mowing the lawn. I checked around the seat and the floor of the mower but there was no ring in sight. As I moved around the property, I could hear the cows and roosters in the background! It was a lot of fun knowing that I was searching for something missing right there on a genuine farm with animals and crops! Next, I began metal detecting in front of the house, conducting a grid search back and forth across the lawn. Still, I couldn’t find Toni’s ring. I was then hoping that I might discover the diamond heirloom in the pickup truck or in Clay’s work vehicle which he gave me permission to search, but they too checked out negative for the precious piece of jewelry that I was looking for.
The couple mentioned to me that after the accident took place with the USPS truck, the mail carrier once again caused a second collision. This time it happened closer to the farmhouse, next to the barn. He was reversing his truck to leave the property when he ended up smashing the rear end of his vehicle into one of the fence posts which caused it to lean off to one side. Clay had to walk over and inspect the damage. That is when the two interacted for a while before the carrier finally left the premises. I thought that it was a possibility that perhaps the ring fell to the ground during that second ordeal. I immediately detected that area, but there was no white gold ring signals showing up on my detector screen.
The warm night hours were getting later and later until it was nearing midnight. Eventually my headlamp grew dim and it was time to switch to another one to resume the search. Without using this helpful tool, I would never be able to effectively conduct the many night searches that I schedule.
I continued my detecting in areas located near the spots where the couple had generally parked their vehicles. I wanted to make sure that the ring did not bounce from the blacktop over to the grassy areas. After checking all of the surfaces on the concrete right up to the edges of the adjacent lawn sections, once again I came up empty handed. There was still no ring to be found. At that point I started scratching my head, wondering where this little one could have ended up. It was quite possible that it was lost in the house but it was too late at night to offer my services to check inside their furniture using tools like my endoscope. Also, they were pretty certain that the engagement ring was not lost in the house because they could not find it anywhere after checking their place quite thoroughly.
My only conclusion for not finding the missing family heirloom at that stage of the game, was that I must have overlooked the beloved piece of white gold and missed the signal during my earlier grid searches on the property. That was my only conclusion as to why I had not found the ring thus far. Sometimes the reason that I don’t easily find someone’s ring at first has more to do with alternative locations that the person was not thinking about when they try to recall all of the facts of where they were and what they were doing before and after the ring had disappeared. In this particular case, it should have been a no-brainer as to isolating the probable locations of where the ring fell out of Clay’s pocket. The reason that I could come to that conclusion was because Clay realized the ring was gone before they left their property for the afternoon, just after the postal service truck struck their vehicle. The ring had to be on the property or in their house.
I resolved to go back and start grid searching the places that I had already covered, beginning in one section of the yard and then moving to the next. I would slow my swings down a bit and work more carefully to observe even the lightest of signals that would register on my Equinox 800 detector. Because I was dealing with white gold, if the ring was on a particular angle in the grass, it was quite possible that the detector could have initially hit the ring signal, but perhaps I may have missed the sketchiness of the signal that the detector was showing on the screen and perhaps I continued walking passed the gold.
My first attempt to re-grid the lawn took place over by the edge of the cornfield that was adjacent to the far side of the front lawn. It turned out to be completely clear. Then, instead of detecting the backyard all over again, I decided to search the front lawn because it was a smaller section to cover. My thought was that if I did find the ring in front of the house, I would not have wasted all of my time re-gridding the larger places in the yard that had more square footage to detect. Since it was nearing 1 a.m., I resolved to make that my last attempt for the night. I had a long trip ahead of me and I knew that I needed to wrap things up soon enough.
I carefully grid-searched the front lawn, moving the coil of my detector consistently from left to right and moving it much slower this time around so that there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that I hadn’t missed the ring signal. That night, I was picking up all kinds of coins, bullet shells, aluminum pieces, little parts and gizmos that were registering similar numbers to what a gold ring would look like on my detector screen. Yet, I still was not able to find Toni’s jewel. Almost at the end of the lawn search, I had about two more passes to go before I could rule out any possibility that the ring was lost on the front lawn located in front of the farmhouse porch. When one is detecting for this many hours, your mind starts working against you and you sometimes get tempted to believe that in the final seconds of your search you’re most likely not going to find the target based on the odds. However, I have learned to never discount even an inch of property because you might find what you’re looking for in that final backstretch of your search.
Brian Finally Discovers the Lost Engagement Hiding Between the Blades of Grass, Waiting Patiently to Come Home!
And believe it or not, just as I was starting the second to last grid line, I hit a signal that was very weak, but one that resembled a possible white gold target. I moved the detector coil in a different angle over the target and to my surprise the piece of metal was still giving off possible gold numbers! At that point, I was not going to advance passed the target, but I decided to spend more time checking out this potential piece of precious metal. Next, I knelt down on the grass which was located almost directly in front of the house, adjacent to the sidewalk that led to the front steps. I pulled out my pinpointer to isolate the area of where the small object was being detected and I focused in on the very spot where the handheld detector was telling me where the object was located. All of a sudden, I saw what appeared to be the band of a ring that was leaning on its side in between blades of grass!
Brian Rudolph Showing Off His Excitement After Finding Toni’s Beautiful Diamond Engagement Ring!
I looked a bit closer and there it was! The very piece of jewelry that I had been looking for during the past 5 hours was finally discovered right there in front of the house! I found the ring! Yes, there it was, buried in the grass! I had obviously detected right passed the ring earlier that evening. I concluded that with the combination of the ring being white gold, resting on a certain angle in the grass, and moving the coil too quickly over the ring, caused me to miss the target all together!
Though I was regretful that I had wasted quite a bit of time because of overlooking the weak signal that the ring was giving off, I was just happy that I had successfully completed my search and that I was able to soon return this gorgeous white gold and diamond engagement ring back to its proper owner! This find would also prove to be helpful in freeing Clay from “being in the doghouse” for losing what his fiancé had entrusted him with when she gave him the ring for safekeeping!
Toni and Brian Celebrating the Discovery of the Bride-To-Be’s Stunning Engagement Ring!
If you would like to view the search video and the moment that I revealed the ring to Toni late that night, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel and you will be notified when the video is uploaded in the next few months.
I could not have been happier for the couple that evening! I was exhausted and almost ready to pack up my gear as I was nearing the end of my search when the beloved ring was discovered! I was nearly out of search area at that closing moment of the night! And yet, the ring was there – found almost on my last grid pass! What a fantastic finish! I got all excited about soon presenting the ring back to Toni that night! After packing up my things and taking some pictures of the ring, I prepared to share the happy news with the bride-to-be! She was beyond surprised! What an incredible moment! The look on her face was worth all of the hours of searching and persevering in order to bring this very special family heirloom back to the finger that it was meant to be secured upon!
What a wonderful feeling I had saying goodbye to Toni that night! I told her to congratulate Clay for me when he would arise from his sleep later that morning! It was like living a dream knowing that I had found what was so very difficult to detect! As I walked to my car in order to prepare for departure, I heard some of the farm animals in the background, including a couple of friendly cats that had kept me company during my search. It was almost as if they were congratulating me on a job well done and wishing me well as I started down the driveway to the main road and then headed off on my long journey towards home!
“Thank you again Brian for everything! I can’t thank you enough for finding the ring for us. My heart is just pounding with enjoyment. Thank you again!!!! Clay and I are very grateful to have found a guy like you to come out in the night looking for my engagement ring. Brian you have a positive outlook especially bringing some positivity and commitment on finding my ring. I would highly recommend you to anyone who would be in need of the services that you do. Thank you for everything!”
– Toni and Clay of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
If you would like to watch the SEARCH VIDEO and RING REVEAL pertaining to this story, the YOUTUBE link will be provided shortly. To receive the notification letting you know when the video is uploaded to YOUTUBE, feel free to SUBSCRIBE to BRIAN’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL by typing: THE RING RETURNER.
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEO YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS WHEN THIS LATEST SEARCH VIDEOIS UPLOADED! BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEOS ARE FOUND ON HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – THE RING RETURNER.
Abdul’s Palladium Ring Recovered from a Baseball Field! Call Brian Rudolph at (301) 466-8644 to Help You Get Back What Has Been Lost!
Happiness Shines All Over Abdul’s Face Now That His Wedding Band is Safely Back on His Finger!
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
I received an email from a woman who desperately wanted to find her husband’s missing palladium wedding band which was lost on a baseball field the day before. Abdul’s wife went online to research possible methods in recovering lost rings on sport fields. The Ring Finders directory popped up on her phone and she began to search for a local metal detectorist in the Gaithersburg, Maryland area. My name came up on her Google search and she quickly reached out to me.
As soon as I read the email description of how Abdul’s wedding band disappeared off of his finger while playing baseball, I quickly called the couple to ask questions and to set up a time when I could go out looking for the ring. Abdul told me that he was playing various positions during a baseball game at Gaithersburg High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He didn’t know when the ring slipped off of his finger but he did recognize that it was missing before he left the field that day. After the game, he searched everywhere and yet he still couldn’t find it anywhere. That’s when other players got involved and looked in every position where Abdul was playing the game, but they too came up empty-handed. He eventually had to leave the baseball diamond that afternoon knowing that the very ring that was presented to him by his beloved wife on their wedding day would be left behind somewhere on the baseball field. He told me on the phone that it was quite a disheartening feeling to wonder whether he would ever be able to get the ring back or not. Because there was another team that was supposed to play after his group completed their game, he worried that the ring might have already been found by someone else.
During the entire time on the phone, I tried to give some hope to the couple that if the ring was still out there on the field, I would be able to find it and return it to Abdul. It just so happened that he got sick overnight and so he was not in any position to go out and meet me on the baseball diamond to recount where he was positioned during the game when he lost the ring. Instead, he sent me a diagram of the baseball field and where he was positioned at different times, including the areas where he practiced and warmed up before playing the game. This was extremely helpful and it would provide just what I needed to search the various places where he stood and played ball. Before we got off the phone, I told Abdul and his wife that I would update them as soon as I finished with my search later that evening.
By the time I got to the search site at Gaithersburg High School, the sun was descending behind the trees that encased the baseball field where I would be conducting my search. I gathered all of my gear out of the car and walked to the field that Abdul so perfectly diagrammed earlier that morning. There was no game going on that evening, so I had the baseball diamond to myself, including the outfield.
The first thing I did was say a prayer and I asked the Lord for help during the search. I then started metal detecting over by the batting cage which Abdul also illustrated for me. There were a lot of potential signals, but every time I checked the ground in that area, there was no ring to be found. Bottle caps and aluminum can pull tabs were scattered all over the place. This made my search a little bit slower than anticipated.
As soon as I completed my search around the cage area, I headed over to the baseball diamond. Because Abdul played various positions, I needed to first check all of the hotspots. If I didn’t find the ring in those places, I would start doing a grid search over the entire field. I metal detected around all of the bases and to the left and right of the baselines by several feet. I wanted to see if the ring may have come off while he was running the bases or in the process of getting tagged out.
Once I completed my detecting in those places, I was convinced that the wedding band was not lost in those locations. Then, I went into the outfield and began to grid search beyond first, second and third bases. Still there was nothing to be found. By that time I may have completed about an hour and a half of detecting. I was certain that the ring was not in the outfield unless somebody had found the ring just by chance when looking down at the ground. The odds of that were very slim because the field was completely covered with thick, healthy grass. Most likely the wedding band would have settled between the “blades of green” and would not have been seen by anybody.
My next search area focused on the grassy area behind the backstop. I also metal detected both dugouts and still came up with nothing. Abdul had walked behind the dugouts and took a couple breaks by walking closer to the tree line, so I checked those areas behind the backstop, as well. My last area to check without having to re-grid the entire field, was to metal detect all of the area inside the baseball diamond. Most of the grass within the parameter of all of the bases was very dry and much of it was dead. There were also a lot of spaces that were simply dirt spots with absolutely no vegetation. I presumed that if the ring was initially lost in the dirt-filled areas in the diamond section of the field, it would have most likely been picked up by someone between the time of Abdul’s game and the other games that followed after his team left for the day. The reason for this was because there were so few places for the ring to hide. There were also summer programs going on earlier in the day, which could have caused a young one to eyeball the handsome palladium band and walk off with it. I was hoping that this was not the case and that it was still out there, waiting to be found. I put my doubts aside and focused on eliminating all possibilities as to where that ring could have ended up.
Abdul’s Ring Found At Last! The Wedding Band Resting Amongst the Dead Grass and Weeds on the Baseball Diamond!
Starting at home plate, I moved my way to third base and then started a grid search back towards home. I kept moving my way across the playing field for a few more passes before I stopped briefly to grab my headlamp that was in my backpack nearby. It was starting to get dark outside and I needed the field to be fully illuminated as I traveled in straight lines across the diamond.
The Ring Slipped Off of Abdul’s Finger Just 8 Feet From the Pitcher’s Plate!
I then resumed my search and continued to move across the infield, back and forth, swinging the coil of the detector with steady movements, hoping that I would get the target signal that I was looking for.
I was getting random target signals here and there, but each time that I put the pinpointer (which is a handheld detector) down to the ground to investigate the potential target, I would discover that it was a coin, pull tab or something else that was below the surface.
Finally, as I neared the pitcher’s mound, approximately 8 feet away from it, I got the perfect signal. It was a bouncy kind of target signal that indicated that the object was above the surface and it came into the range of a palladium wedding band. Just as I looked down to investigate what the detector was picking up in the midst of the dead grass, my eyes zeroed in on the very object that I had been searching for in the past two hours or so! I had found Abdul’s ring! I was so very happy! What a great feeling it was to see the one and only object that I had been hunting for! Because of the location where the band had been resting, I presumed that Abdul must have been pitching at the time when the ring slipped off his finger.
Brian Rudolph Ending Another Successful Search!
I was getting random target signals here and there, but each time that I put the pinpointer (which is a handheld detector) down to the ground to investigate the potential target, I would discover that it was a coin, pull tab or something else that was below the surface. Finally, as I neared the pitcher’s mound, approximately 8 feet away from it, I got the perfect signal. It was a bouncy kind of target signal that indicated that the object was above the surface and it came into the range of a palladium wedding band. Just as I looked down to investigate what the detector was picking up in the midst of the dead grass, my eyes zeroed in on the very object that I had been searching for in the past two hours or so! I had found Abdul’s ring! I was so very happy! What a great feeling it was to see the one and only object that I had been hunting for! Because of the location where the band had been resting, I presumed that Abdul must have been pitching at the time when the ring slipped off his finger.
The other possibility was that he had been taking off his glove while switching sides with the opponent and it came off at that point.
Brian Checking Out the Palladium Wedding Band Up Close!
Whichever the case may have been, I was so delighted that I would soon be able to return the wedding band back to Abdul! That night I rejoiced for his sake and it made me so happy that I could find his ring after no one else on his team could recover it! I also thanked the Lord for giving me the ability to search and recover what Abdul and his wife hoped to get back in their possession! I couldn’t wait to share the good news with its rightful owner!
After taking some photographs and a bit more video, I packed up my gear and left the baseball field with a big smile on my face!
If you would like to view the search video and the ring reveal, please avail yourself to subscribe to my YouTube channel and I will notify you when the video is uploaded in the next few months.
Abdul and Brian Celebrating the Ring Returned to it’s Owner!
There’s nothing like it in the world to be able to return something that means so much to someone else! My gratitude goes out to Chris Turner, CEO of The Ring Findersand for his marvelous vision to save the sentimental from extinction by providing a directory of metal detectorists that connects people like me to people in need like Abdul!
If you would like to watch the SEARCH VIDEO and RING REVEAL pertaining to this story, the YOUTUBE link will be provided shortly. To receive the notification letting you know when the video is uploaded to YOUTUBE, feel free to SUBSCRIBE to BRIAN’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL by typing: THE RING RETURNER.
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEO YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS WHEN THIS LATEST SEARCH VIDEOIS UPLOADED! BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEOS ARE FOUND ON HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – THE RING RETURNER.
Emily’s 14 Karat White Gold Engagement Ring with Opal Stone and Diamonds
Emily’s 14 Karat White Gold Nesting Band with Diamonds
After a Week at the Bottom of Frederick Maryand’s Monocacy River, Emily’s Beloved Engagement Ring Set was Found and Returned to the Bride-To-Be by Metal Detectorist and Ring Finder, Brian Rudolph!
Emily and Mark Excitedly Show Off the Bride-To-Be’s Beloved Engagement Ring Set That Was Thought to Be Lost in the Monocacy River Forever!
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
Emily and Mark got together with a bunch of their friends and headed off to a fun swimming hole near Frederick, Maryland on the Monocacy River, located not far from Monocacy National Battlefield. It was a hot summer day outside, perfect for couples to hang out, take a plunge in the river and make a fun-filled day outside. Unfortunately, their plans started to fall apart quite quickly when Emily’s two rings went missing some time while they were all out by the water. She was pretty convinced that she lost the rings during the 30 minutes of play time in the river with her fiancé. Mark was holding her up while she was lying in his arms in the river, and she believed it was probably at that point when the rings slipped off her finger. Emily didn’t feel the jewelry come off of her finger, but she believed that it was the most probable scenario that the water had something to do with how the rings fell off of her finger.
In Emily’s moment of panic, as she came out of the water, the young lady told the rest of the group what had happened. Immediately a search began to look for the rings out on the riverbank and in the shallow parts of the water where they could see all the way to the bottom. One of the rings that went missing was Emily’s engagement ring. It was made of 14 karat white gold, centered with a lovely opal stone and accompanied by several diamonds surrounding it. The other ring was part of the engagement ring set, a 14 karat white gold nesting band, very petite in size which held three small diamonds along the top of the ring. The sad part of the whole ordeal was that Emily had just received these precious keepsakes on the day that she was proposed to only a month or so earlier (Her wedding date is scheduled for September 2020!).
The fact that the bride-to-be lost both of her rings was very difficult for her to deal with and you can imagine how upset she was for the rest of that day (and for the next week, as well). Everyone kept searching in the water to see if they could spot the rings, but nothing was found. As the group made their way into the deeper area of the river, there was just no way to see that far down in the water where Emily believed the rings may have come off. Besides the loss of her jewelry, the worst part of her afternoon came when she had to leave the river empty-handed.
The couple was desperate to see what they could do to get the newly engaged lady’s rings back. Emily was not about to give up hope yet, and that hope was about to be called by Mark’s future bride! They looked online to find tips on how to pull a ring from a river, and The Ring Finders directory popped up on Google. Emily immediately contacted me and before long we were talking on the phone to make plans for a recovery effort.
I put Emily at ease by telling her that I had successful recovery stories dealing with finding rings in water. Some people told her that the rings most likely had been washed down river which would make it impossible for them to ever be found again. However, I assured her that those rings did not go anywhere after they fell to the bottom of the water. She was relieved at my words.
Once I received all of the details about the missing engagement band set, I asked her additional questions to help me get the entire picture of what we were dealing with. Because she lost the rings at a state park, I told her that I would need to pursue special permissions from the park service in order for me to conduct a recovery mission. She had lost the rings on a Friday, I believe, and then she first contacted me the following day or so. Therefore, I would have to wait another 24 hours before I could contact the park service to request a permit to search the river on Emily and Mark’s behalf. When we got off the phone, we had a plan in place to begin the process of getting me in the Monocacy River as fast as possible!
Monday came and I was on the phone calling various departments connected to Maryland’s state park service. I was initially bounced around between the county of Frederick and the Maryland park service. But, eventually I was able to talk to the right people who set me up with a top administrator who could affirm that I was talking to the correct people to pursue a permit for Emily and Mark. One employee at the park service referred me to a website where I could apply for special permissions to search the water. Metal detectors are strictly prohibited at this particular park as most state parks prohibit the use of any detector. What was supposed to take possibly up to two weeks or more to “hopefully” get a permit request approved, I was able to get an official permit in hand within three days of filling out the paperwork! I was granted full access to the river! Thanks to the hard work of a couple of top administrators at the park service, they were able to push the paper and “cut the red tape” a whole lot faster than the usual process! I was quite excited with the news that I was free to search the water much sooner than later! Though I was only given a specific period of time that I could search the river and after that I would not be able to continue any futures searches, I felt I had a large enough window to get the job done (if the rings were not already plucked out of the water by other metal detectorists).
Every day leading up to when I received the approval to search the river, I kept giving updates to Emily who greatly appreciated all of my efforts. I was delighted to help the couple in every way possible! The next step was to schedule a time to meet Emily and Mark over by the park where the rings went missing the week before. I looked at my calendar and set up the next possible timeslot when I could conduct the search. I needed them to show me where everyone was hanging out on that dreadful afternoon when the rings left Emily’s finger. Then, I could search all of the probable locations where the engagement ring and nesting band fell to the bottom of the Monocacy. We agreed on meeting that Friday, which was the Friday following Mark and Emily’s excursion when the initial happy and fun afternoon suddenly turned so very sad and disappointing for the couple.
Friday arrived and I headed to the Monocacy River to meet Emily in the park where the rings went missing. Mark was not able to join us due to his work schedule. We met in the park parking lot and then Emily walked me to the spot where the group of friends were all hanging out the week earlier. It was a considerable journey through the woods alongside the riverbank before we got to the place where she lost the rings. When we got to the spot where everyone went swimming that day, we walked down onto the riverbank where there were lots of stones and pebbles – perfect for keeping my gear dry above the water.
Frederick Maryland’s Monocacy River
Emily then showed me where she played in the water and where she and Mark drifted downriver approximately 50 yards or so. She had an idea of where she thought she may have held onto some rocks as the water current was taking Mark and Emily downriver. She thought that maybe the rings slipped off when she was trying to brace herself at that time. Emily couldn’t be certain of her predictions because there were times when she was just floating in the water and the rings could have slipped off at any of those moments. In any case, I was given a very good picture of how things looked on the day that the rings disappeared and I then had all of the parameters to work with as to where the rings may have settled to the bottom of the river.
The water depth was probably around two and a half feet to three feet deep closer to the middle of the river and maybe higher in a few other spots. It was very shallow due to the fact that we had gotten so little rain in the weeks leading up to the search. Though most of my body was above the water, the current was quite swift so I did have some opposition from the speed by which the water was traveling. The terrain at the bottom of the river also made the search more complicated because of how difficult it was to move about without tripping over a rock or small boulder.
My search grid would involve a 50 yard area from left to right (down river) and 30 yards from one side of the river to the other side (though Emily and I agreed that I only needed to search 20 yards from our side of the Monocacy riverbed out towards the middle of the river because she didn’t float close to the opposite end of the riverbank). Once we finished going over all of the details, I headed back to the car to put on the rest of my wetsuit and gather all of my gear so I could soon begin the search for Emily’s missing rings!
Emily wasn’t sure if she would ever get her rings back, but I kept telling her that all things are possible if she would keep believing the positive and not doubt. I shared with her that in life, we must doubt our feelings of doubt and believe the impossible can happen. The Bible says, “Everything is possible for him who believes” (Mark 9:23). Yes, it was a large area to search. Yes, it is hard enough to metal detect that amount of space on land, let alone the degree of difficulty in searching a moving body of water like the Monocacy. Yet, I was determined to find Emily’s lost rings. And I didn’t just want to return to her the opal engagement ring, but also the other white gold band, as well! Before I headed out into the water, I prayed that the Lord would favor my search and to give Emily some hope inside to believe for the impossible! God loves the covenant of marriage, as He created it, and her engagement ring was a symbol of promise (betrothal) unto marriage! Therefore, I always know that I have favor from above when searching for lost engagement rings and wedding bands!
Emily’s Rings Lost Somewhere in the Historical Monocacy River
As Emily hung out on the shore, reading and doing some work on her tablet, I began my hunt for the missing rings. Because the items were very petite in size and made of 14 karat white gold, picking up the target signals on the detector would not be easy. Having a small, white gold object lost at the bottom of a body of water is not a good combination. The signals are light and very difficult to hit effectively, especially if you swing the metal detector coil too fast. Every step taken and every decision made out in the river had to be slow and very methodical in the way that I conducted this search.
My first grid was about 20 yards downstream, starting where Emily pointed out the first hotspot to investigate. There were rocks of various sizes covering the bottom of the river and there was nothing but stones in between the larger formations. Not only did I have to metal detect over and around and underneath all of those obstacles, but I would have to deal with many pieces of garbage that were discarded in the water over a long period of time. I found old beer can pop tops along with torn up cans, miscellaneous pieces of aluminum and much more throw-away items of trash. I would end up using two of my Equinox 800 machines with two different size coils. I used a 6 inch coil and an 11 inch coil as well. The smaller coil was helpful to get around some of the larger rocks and downed trees. The larger one was helpful to cover more territory in the river, as long as I wasn’t slowed down by metal trash that was settled close to other pieces of garbage at the bottom of the water.
I believe Emily hung out for a couple of hours before she needed to pack up her things and head on out. She kept a great attitude even though I had not yet found her rings. By the time she started walking back to the car. I told her from the water that I would be relentless in my search in finding what had been lost. Just before she took off, I asked Emily where Mark proposed to her with the rings.I wanted to get the whole story behind these precious pieces of jewelry that became extremely sentimental on the day of the proposal! Everything about the location of where Mark popped the question and how he proposed to Mark was absolutely beautiful and so fairytale like. This only propelled me even more to do whatever necessary to get these rings back on her finger! We said our goodbyes and I assured her that I would give Emily an update upon leaving the park.
If one were to observe the amount of territory that I had to search in this historical river, it would only emit stress on that person and bring lots of second-guessing to the mind based on the difficulty of finding such petite pieces of white gold at the bottom of the water. There were so many places that the bands could have ended up. There weren’t any clues to go by as to whether the rings came off at the same time, or if one came off in one location and then the other slipped off sometime later. Honestly, I loved the challenge and I was just so happy to give it my all in attempting to return these sentimental pieces back to Emily.
The main strategy that I implemented was to continue searching all of the hotspot locations where Emily may have lost the rings and focus my efforts on gridding each pass, heading downriver and then back up the river, approximately a distance of 20 feet for each pass. The width of the grid parameter was probably around 20 yards left to right.
While I was out there in the middle of the river, I couldn’t help but be so grateful for the beautiful weather that I was experiencing. It was warm outside, with no chance of rain in the forecast. To be surrounded by such amazing creations of God, there was just nothing like it! Then, add to the experience the whole idea of searching for lost items that mean so very much to another human being, it makes life so fulfilling and fun!
I had given myself a good five or six hour window to search the river that day. Afterwards, I would need to head north to Pennsylvania, near historical Gettysburg for a wedding that I was attending. I had been invited by a grateful couple that I helped in recovering the bride-to-be’s engagement ring that was lost 40 yards out in the Atlantic Ocean just two weeks before the wedding! She lost the ring on her bachelorette party weekend! I was quite honored to be a part of the festivities! It was kind of special that at one point in the day I was searching for a bride-to-be’s engagement ring set, and then later that night I would be celebrating the wedding of a bride who would be wearing the ring that I was able to return to her from the depths of the ocean! I thought that it would make an even more enchanting story if I was able to recover Emily’s rings before having to continue north towards Pennsylvania that afternoon!
Four hours passed by and I continued my detecting efforts in the water for the missing rings. Each time I covered a section of the river, I was only encouraged that I had eliminated more possibilities as to where the jewelry could have ended up. I had not lost any of my drive and enthusiasm for finding Emily’s rings. I kept swinging my detector in straight lines going up and down the river and then side to side. I was continuing to cover a distance of about 20 yards wide and search in 20 yard sections of the entire 50 yards, up and down the river.
At some point, I was finishing one of my grid passes when I hit a signal that was in the range of Emily’s lost rings. This was not the first time that day that I had gotten other potential targets to check out. In fact, I had plenty of them. In those first many hours of searching, I consistently pulled pieces of trash out of the water, but no rings had been found. This current signal was yet another one that I needed to check out. I knew the exact range of VDI numbers (these are numbers that help to identify the type of metal the target could potentially be) to look for on my machine and this piece of metal was showing the kind of target that got me curious! The numbers on my Equinox 800 detector screen were dancing around a number: four, five, seven, nine, and I believe eleven, as well. I was looking for such low numbers on the scale of my detector and I knew that the signal that I wanted was not going to pound hard in the headphones. Rather, it was going to be light and questionable. These rings were very petite, and therefore there wasn’t a lot of white gold on them at all to be detected easily. Like I did with many other potential signals that day, I reached down into the water, right over the spot where my metal detector had picked up the signal, and I surveyed the metal object with my Garrett handheld detector called a “pinpointer” in order to isolate the location where the object was resting. Once I was confident of the exact area where I knew the object was hiding, I placed the handheld detector off to the side (which was attached to a cord and clipped to my harness belt), grabbed a cluster of stones and sediment in the vicinity of where the buried object was and brought it all up to the surface for review. I have to use this type of method in rivers because it is impossible to use a scoop in this type of environment due to the quantity of stones and rocks that are stuck to the bottom of the water. Therefore, I have to use my hands to bring up the objects that I am potentially looking for. Next, I grabbed my pinpointer again and scanned over the contents that were in my hand to see if I found the metal object that I had detected moments earlier. To my great surprise, my eyes first focused in on the loveliest opal stone, then some small diamonds surrounding it came into view, and finally I saw the white gold band! Indeed, I had found the engagement ring! It was a fantastic moment! In this vast area of water, I had recovered this small precious keepsake! Like a needle in a haystack!
Though I had nobody around to share the excitement with, I expressed all of my joy and happiness into my GoPro video camera that I had been using to document the entire search up to that point! I gave thanks to the Lord for giving me the ability to find the ring and bring it up from the river where it had been resting at the bottom for over a week! I was thrilled at finding the band! Between the two rings, this one was the most important one to Emily because it was her engagement ring. Yet, I was not going to stop at that point. I would continue searching for the nesting band once I secured the recently found item in my zipped up case attached to my metal detector harness. I made sure that Emily’s opal ring was not going to be lost again in that river!
Discovering one of the sought-after pieces that went missing was such a boost of encouragement to me! My search methods that day were working effectively! So far, I had not believed that I had overlooked either target that I was after! Could I have missed the other ring due to it consisting of a thin band of white gold? It was possible. But, I kept my mindset on believing that I was thorough and accurate in my grid moves. When one is detecting in water, there are no cones or tape to keep you walking in a straight line! You have to be extremely careful not to move too far to the right or to the left, or sweep too short on either side of your body as you move forward with the detector.
Once I found the first of the two lovely rings, I was back at it again, searching for the second one, which was even thinner than the engagement ring. I had barely gotten a decent signal off of the last ring and so I was confident that this one would be even harder to recover. I believe I had another 30 minutes or so for me to try to strike gold, but at the conclusion of that search day I was unable to walk out of the river with both rings. I had no time left and it was imperative that I got on the road and start heading towards Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for the wedding that would take place later that evening.
Before I made my way out of the river, I took note of where I had found the first ring and I would resume my search the following day. How could I have not been pleased with the results so far? I was able to recover half of what I was sent out to help with and there was still more work to be done! I walked out of the water and gathered up my gear and returned back to the parking lot, packed my things in the car, changed out of my wetsuit and then headed north.
During the whole drive to the hotel, I couldn’t stop thinking about how blessed I was to recover the engagement ring! I couldn’t wait to get back in the water and search for the nesting band! In keeping my word to Emily, I called her but I had to leave a voicemail message. I was vague about my search, hoping I could surprise her the next day with the news that I had found both rings, and not just the opal engagement ring. That was my hope!
The next morning, I left the hotel and drove south to Washington D.C.. I had received an urgent call from a desperate husband who shared that the day before his wife had lost her wedding band at the National Zoo. I immediately headed to the Nation’s Capital to help the couple out. Once I completed the search in D.C., I drove back north again, which was 45 minutes in the direction towards the Monocacy River.
Upon arrival, I once again setup all of my gear along the river bank and quickly made my way over to where I had found the engagement ring the day before. I knew the location because there was a particular formation of rocks along the side of the river, and I had lined up that formation with the place that I had found the first ring in the middle of the river. I knew that if I started walking from those rocks straight out into the middle of the river, I would end up at the location where I found the first ring. Secondly, I could feel a certain rock with my dive boots that was below the surface of the water and it was near that rock that I had found the engagement ring very close to that particular formation. From that point, I counted approximately 30 feet down the river and that was where I had finished my search the day before. I was now ready to begin the second chapter of my recovery efforts
For me, I love the thrill of the challenge to find what is not easily obtainable, especially out in the middle of a river. The current was much faster than the day before, so I needed to work smart and place my feet in certain positions where I would not lose my balance from the swift movement of the water. It was another lovely day outside and once again I could not ask for better weather conditions.
My strategy of the day was to not change anything with the way I searched the day before. I kept doing my grid lines with the same method that I had implemented on Friday and I worked my way farther down the river and then back up again, pushing my way against the stubborn water flow. Then, I would move back down the river and continued to do this in straight lines. Not knowing when the two rings came off of Emily’s finger, it led me to tighten up my mental focus. I had to tell myself that finding the other ring was obtainable just as I found the first one, even though it was a lot more petite and the gold was even thinner than the band of the first ring. I had no idea what the distance was between the first ring falling off and when the second one hit the bottom of the river. However, I wasn’t going to be intimidated by how much more territory needed to be detected!
Approximately 45 minutes into my second search that day, I had searched approximately 20 square yards of river from where I found the engagement ring. Like before, I moved the metal detector slowly so that I would not miss any potential signals that I might swing across. So far, all of the targets that I pulled out of the water that afternoon were small pieces of aluminum – still no ring to be found. At some point, as I continued down the river, slightly detecting to the right side of the water, I hit a signal that was extremely light and almost unrecognizable on my detector. I moved the coil back and forth a little bit more and I was still picking up this particular target that matched white gold. From certain angles I was not getting any reading on my detector screen, so I had to move the detector coil at different positions just to see if I was getting a false reading or not. The signal still showed up and that’s when I started getting more curious. Most detectorists would have moved right across that target because it really didn’t appear to contain much of any metal to consider pulling it up. Someone else would have mistaken it as a small piece of aluminum foil. Because I knew better with white gold targets, I was not about to pass it up. I took my pinpointer and placed it down into the water right over the spot where my detector coil was resting. Then, I removed the coil from the area and immediately the pinpointer found the metal object. The target was obviously just inches from where my hand was positioned! Also, I could tell that it was a small target by the way the tip of the pinpointer was sounding off. Next, I removed the pinpointer out of the way and quickly grabbed a handful of sediment and rocks where the target was resting. Bringing my handful of stones and sand up to the surface, I immediately scanned the contents for the mysterious metal object. I believe that my first attempt came up with nothing and so I repeated the steps over again until I was certain that this time I hadn’t left the item at the bottom of the river.
I once again used my pinpointer to detect the clump of stones and sediment that was in my hand, and finally the piece of metal was detected by the pinpointer! Whatever it was, I now had it inside my grip! I knew the object was very small because it was surprisingly hidden in the midst of all of the river stones and sediment. I moved my finger through the items and it was then that I saw it! It wasn’t a scrap piece of aluminum from a drinking can, nor was it part of an old used ketchup packet or flimsy milk peel top! Not at all! It was a petite, white gold ring with a very thin band holding 3 small diamonds that were spread out along the top of the precious metal! I immediately knew that I had found the second missing ring because I recognized the details from a photo that Emily had previously provided for me! I did it! I found the nesting band that was part of the original engagement ring set! I could not have been more surprised by my findings based on how weak the target signal was! What an awesome moment!
Unless you are a ring finder like those found in The Ring Finders directory, it’s hard to describe the feeling inside when you discover the very object that you were on a mission to recover. When you find the sought-after keepsake that means so much to someone else, there’s almost a feeling of electricity that works through you! There’s such a rush within that excites all of one’s senses when the missing item is found and then returned to its owner! With search and recovery missions like this one, the degree of difficulty is so large that when one finds the lost property (like in the case of these two missing rings), there is just no greater feeling in the world! Taking on a challenge like this and being able to deliver to the distraught owner, not just one ring, but to find both rings in separate areas in the river, 20 yards apart, there are few words to accurately describe the entire experience!
Metal Detectorist, Brian Rudolph, Successfully Returned Both Rings to Emily and Mark! Call Brian Rudolph to Help You Find Your Lost Keepsakes at (301) 466-8644
I was so thrilled and overjoyed to find this second ring! I held up the nesting band and kissed it, yelling out loud, “Yes! I did it! I found it! Yes!” All kinds of words of excitement and relief flowed from within me, realizing at that moment that I was able to successfully fulfill this mission! I remember just standing there in the middle of the river, holding Emily’s ring in my hand, knowing at that point in time that there was nothing left to recover from the water! My search was over! It was extremely gratifying for me to leave the riverbank with my equipment in one hand and the recently discovered gold band that was zipped up in my harness case! I couldn’t wait to surprise Emily and her fiancé Mark with the good news! As I walked through the woods along the path leading back to the parking lot, I could see the river through the tree line, and I thought to myself, “I did it! I conquered the Monocacy!” At that moment I could only give thanks to the Lord for something as extraordinary as what had just taken place in the last 24 hours!
If you would like to see the video of me revealing the rings to Emily and Mark, please subscribe to the YouTube channel link provided below, and you will receive a notification when the video is uploaded in the next few months. It is worth waiting for! I promise!
Emily Couldn’t Have Been More Happy to Hold Her Missing Rings Once Again!
Emily and Mark were beyond excited to receive the missing rings back in their possession! My efforts to recover the special keepsakes in the Monocacy River were 100% successful and the couple was pleasantly shocked with surprise at the outcome! The look on their faces when I returned both rings will always be fixed in my mind! They were so happy and relieved at the sight of those beautiful bands that had disappeared below the water over a week earlier and located 45 minutes away from where Emily and Mark resided! Now, the engagement set was returned home for good! Emily’s finger was finally reunited with its newly found friends (the ring set), and together they now await the arrival of yet another ring this autumn…the wedding band!
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEO YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS WHEN THIS LATEST SEARCH VIDEOIS UPLOADED! BRIAN’S SEARCH VIDEOS ARE FOUND ON HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – THE RING RETURNER.
