Shawn reached out to me via text today after finding me in the Ring Finders directory. We got on the phone together and he shared with me the details surrounding the disappearance of his wife’s white gold and diamond wedding band. Apparently yesterday afternoon his wife decided to take their 15 month old boy on a stroll around the neighborhood. After getting him situated in the stroller she removed her 3 ring wedding set(2 identical white gold diamond bands and a solitaire diamond ring) to put sun block on the baby and placed all 3 rings on the top of the stroller. She forgot to put them back on before starting the stroll and made it about 6 blocks before noticing them there. Unfortunately at that point only 2 rings were still there…1 of the bands fell off somewhere during the walk. I got to their house in Broomall, PA around 4 pm that same day. Shawn and I re-enacted the whole incident and walked the entire path where his wife strolled with the baby. It was a poured concrete sidewalk with grass on both sides. It was a pretty large search area! Shawn said he spent 4-5 hours searching the day before just with his eyes and with a flashlight at night. He even considered buying or renting a metal detector before deciding to call me. As I always do, the first thing I do is a quick demonstration of my equipment to give confidence that we wont miss it if I get over it. The great thing about this particular situation is that Shawn had the 2nd identical band that I was able to scan with my machine(Minelab Equinox 800) to see exactly what # it would ring up as. In the case of this band it was a solid 9-10 every time. With that info I was able to set my detector to just zero in on that target id. As I always do I brought a back up detector with me which I also set up to just zero-in on that 9-10 target. Shawn was all to happy to join the search by manning the 2nd detector and with him on right and me on left…we went to work. As an experienced detectorist I knew what to listen for so I was able to move pretty fast…Shawn to his credit was doing a pretty good job himself but maybe a little distracted by some errant sounds and trashy signals. Anyway we got about 4 blocks into the search and I felt like this was the most likely place the ring fell off…It was a little downhill and the sidewalk was bumpy. I was ahead of Shawn on left and got the perfect signal I was looking for…a screaming surface 9-10 signal. It was deep grass but I didn’t even look down…I knew what it was! I called Shawn over with the other detector and told him to sweep right where I pointed. When his detector start screaming with a 9-10 signal he looked at me with amazement…do you think that’s it? I said look….and sure enough there it was!!!!
Shawn readily admitted that no way he would have ever found the ring with out a metal detector and most likely wouldn’t have found it even if he bought or rented one. I tell people all the time that the experience of the detectorist is as important as the machine itself. To finish the story…Shawn texted me later to tell me his wife was beyond ecstatic about having her complete set of rings back on her finger!
