I received a call from a woman who lost her engagement ring while sitting in a recliner. As we all know, rings are not usually where people THINK they are. I explained that a metal detector generally does not perform well in a house and most certainly will NOT work in a recliner!! I did suggest that I have other equipment that might aid in the search. She agreed to my show up fee, so I went to her house immediately. Just before I was to leave, I received another message « to bring my metal detector too ». (That prompted the idea that maybe she wasn’t exactly positive as to where the ring might have been lost. However in this case she was correct. It was in the recliner. I used my new Depstech endoscope DS700 and did a preliminary search….NOTHING! I then suggested that we turn over the recliner to see if I could access the areas through a different location. In the process of turning over the recliner, I heard a clink! That was a clue that something loose was UNDER the fabric. I cut a small section of the fabric and with the endoscope was able to see the lost ring. In hind site, I wish I had taken a photo using the endoscope, but alas, I didn’t. I had to make a larger cut to retrieve the ring. She WAS correct about the location and the Ring was retrieved by hand.
Lisa’s 14 karat White Gold Diamond Covered Wedding Band
I love doing In-House searches because there is always a new challenge with solving the mystery at hand! No two searches are ever the same, especially when a ring disappears in a home!
I received a phone call from Lisa of Arlington Virginia, who shared how she was perplexed with not knowing what happened to her wedding band that had disappeared in her Arlington home a few days before. She remembered taking off her wedding band upstairs in the master bathroom. When she returned to the bathroom the next morning to place the band back on her finger, the ring had vanished. She and her husband looked everywhere. She took everything out of her vanity and searched diligently to find her beloved wedding band. She checked the floors and then began checking other places in the home. Nothing turned up. When she exhausted every possibility as to where the ring may have ended up, she found The Ring Finder’s site and contacted me immediately.
On the phone, I asked Lisa every question imaginable, such as: When do you remember taking off the ring? Do you remember removing anything from the bathroom that might have had the ring inside of it or with it? Did you hear anything bounce on the bathroom floor? Were there any other people in the house, like a house cleaner, who may have placed it somewhere or accidentally knocked it off the vanity?
Lisa answered all of my questions and when the Q and A time was finished, she and her husband scheduled me to come over later that evening.
That night, I arrived in Arlington Virginia and began the in-house search. I started in the master bathroom where Lisa had last seen her diamond encircled wedding band. She was fantastic about letting me go through all the drawers in her vanity area in the bathroom and take out all of the different compartments in order to investigate every crevice of every to see if I could find the ring. I was beyond meticulous about not missing anything, just in case the ring landed in one of her very organized makeup sectionals. We ruled out the possibility that the ring had fallen into the sink drain hole because the stopper in the sink did not allow for the wedding band to fall down into the drain.
I searched the garbage can, the tile floor, I looked in the towel closet and in a second closet that was adjacent to where all of the linens and accessories were kept. Still no wedding band found. I even looked in the shower stall just in case the ring had bounced onto the floor and then bounced again into the shower area.
Once I finished concluding that the ring was nowhere to be found in the master bathroom, I continued in other rooms of the house, convinced that the ring must have ended up somewhere else outside of the parameter of the bathroom. « Why » and « How » would be the questions that would need to be answered over the course of the evening. I looked everywhere. Still, no ring was discovered. I continued to the next floor below and repeated my steps in each room to assure myself, Lisa and her husband Dan that we could eliminate more areas to search that were on my checklist. I couldn’t believe that I still had not found the treasured jewel on the third and second levels that I thoroughly investigated. This took me down to the first floor where the living room and kitchen area was located. It was the last level to check because she had never gone to the basement with the wedding band that seemed to have evaporated into thin air. So, it was clear that I could rule out any search down there.
Throughout my journey to uncover the missing keepsake, I used my in-house search equipment, which included my handheld metal detector, along with a small sniper coil on my regular detector. A detectorist is very limited to what you can do with a detector because of the quantity of metal that is found in sofas, floors and walls. The most important tools to use happen to be the use of the mind and of the eyes. One must think clearly in regards to all of the possibilities of what could have happened to the piece of jewelry and to look very carefully as to where it may have hid itself.
Lisa’s White Gold Diamond Covered Wedding Band Sparkles Brilliantly
Once I finished searching the vestibule, half bathroom, the dining room, living room (all of the sofas, chairs, air vents and area rugs), the kitchen was the last room to search. I was pretty confident that I had not missed anything. If there were no other possibilities as to what happened to the disappearing ring, it would have been found long before I arrived at the scene! These In-House searches are usually not so simple to solve. They require much deduction, thinking outside of the box of reason and it takes patience and confidence to figure out what may have happened to the ring.
As Lisa’s husband Dan was preparing the evening supper, I requested permission to search the final room – the kitchen. If it was not in there, I would have no more places to check and I would have to call it quits for the night. I had already conducted a three and a half hour search at that point. Dan gave me the go-ahead to look under the stove, refrigerator and any other places that had cracks or gaps where the ring could have rolled or slid under. This also included the lovely kitchen island where Dan was preparing a delicious gourmet meal for two. Once I looked everywhere in the kitchen, every spot was clear of the potential of hiding that stubborn « ring of ice ».
At this point, there was only one place left that had gone unchecked, and that was the kitchen trash can. I knew that if it was not in there, I would have completely run out of options. I asked Lisa if I could look through the garbage, piece by piece, to see if the ring had ended up in there. She deferred to her husband who was just about to finish all the preparations for their dinner. Dan politely and respectfully declined giving me permission to allow me to conduct the search. This family was very private, and just like many Washingtonians (people who live in DC, and the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia) there are limitations to how much someone will permit you into their private world. It is completely understandable. Dan felt uncomfortable allowing me to look through their trash, and so I suggested that the two of them look through the bag upon finishing their evening meal. I completed my suggestion by asking them whether or not the trash had been taken out ever since Lisa had lost her ring. Their response was that it was not taken out to the garage and not given over to the garbage truck quite yet. But the truck would be coming in the morning and they planned to have the garbage bags taken away first thing in the morning. This included the kitchen bag of garbage.
I pleaded with both of them to make certain to go through the garbage because it was quite possible that the wedding band had been placed by accident in the garbage. It was my only explanation for the disappearance of the ring since I had not discovered it in any of the other rooms.
I may have said something that caused Lisa to talk things over with Dan because moments later, she asked if I would excuse myself from the kitchen so they could talk things over privately. I was happy to do so and after a short while I was called back over and Dan gave the go-ahead for me to go through the trash. I was happy for their decision because if they didn’t check the garbage before taking it out to the curb, their last attempt to find Lisa’s ring would have gone out the window and we would have never known if it could have possibly found its way in the bag.
Immediately I went to the car to grab my rubber gloves and started back to the kitchen where I took a hold of the white garbage bag and headed out to the rear patio.
I knelt down on the brick laid surface, in front of the bag, and piece by piece I removed the rubbish. Sometimes I get the question from people as to what I may be thinking when I’m almost done with all of my searching and it comes down to one last place to search. Many times I stay quite hopeful that a miracle will take place and that I will defeat the odds at the “11:59th position” on the clock. In all honesty, I am wishing for a fairy tale ending. What I was doing in the back of the house was my « Hail Mary » attempt. It was the last play of the game, so to speak.
Lisa Excitedly Shows Off Her Once-Gone-Missing Wedding Band!
I kept going through the trash, removing food scraps and random items that came from places throughout the house. I had a separate bag to discard the miscellaneous garbage, and soon I had just about filled the empty bag with everything that was in the trash bag that was under the kitchen sink. Then, just as there was almost nothing left to look through, I emptied a small plastic transparent bag that had miscellaneous throw-away items that were not food related. The contents fell to the bottom of the near empty bag and there before my eyes, with the search headlamp blazing towards the plastic, I thought I saw something sparkle brilliantly towards the very bottom. I reached farther in to grab it out and there it was! The missing ring! Lisa’s beautiful wedding band! Her diamond covered wedding band was in there all along and I found it! It turned out that I made the right call in asking the couple to allow me to check the garbage! Apparently, the wedding band had been accidentally discarded along with some other master bathroom throw-away items that were in the transparent baggy! The ring was probably in her hand and she didn’t realize that it got dropped in the same bag along with the other trash! And had I not pointed out the necessity of checking our last option to find the ring (which was the kitchen trash can), that wedding band, full of white gold and diamonds, would have been put out on the curb the following morning, and picked up by the garbage truck where it would be taxied to the central city dump! Incredible! I was elated! All of the feelings that I experienced at that moment, as I stared at the ring that I had been looking for over the course of many hours, gave me an amazing rush! I was even surprised that I had found it with that final option to search the can! It just blew me away! It brings so much gratification to my heart to be able to find something missing such as this! And to give a suggestion as to where it might have ended up and then it turns out to be correct, it’s such a great feeling!
I consolidated all of the trash into one bag and headed for the rear door of the house just feet from where I was searching. I knocked on the door and Lisa opened it up and she immediately asked if I had any luck finding her precious and priceless piece of jewelry. I couldn’t wait to tell her the news!
If you want to know what I said and what her reaction was, stay tuned for my upcoming video to share the awesome reveal! See my YouTube channel link below to subscribe and get the latest search videos including the one that you just read about! Make sure you elect to receive notifications of all new videos so you will know when this story is uploaded on the YouTube channel.
Because of the quantity of searches that have taken place this past summer, I am trying hard to catch up with all of my articles and videos. Please subscribe to my channel: THE RING RETURNER and I assure you that the video to this story will be up very soon. I will be catching up with all of my stories over the next month or two.
The article above is a perfect example of how we should never give up. It reminds us that there is always an explanation as to how the item disappeared, and that we must never disregard searching the most unlikely places. We should never doubt or pass up looking at the last and final location where the ring may have ended up, because it might very well be right there, just waiting for us to find it! Just waiting for it to be returned to its owner from an unlikely search spot like the kitchen garbage can!
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CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
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Sometimes, we conclude the very worst about a situation, when in reality, it may not be as bad as we thought things were after all! In this search account, you will see illustrated exactly what I am talking about!
I was in touch with a woman named Amie who had lost her engagement ring about a week prior to us talking on the phone. She did everything to try to retrieve her ring that had gone missing over the previous weekend. Amie and her husband took all of the right steps to attempt to find or get back her beloved keepsake.
The story goes like this. One Saturday afternoon, Amie left her house in Ashburn, Virginia, to take her daughters out to the soccer game that they would be competing in. As the girls left the house, one of them asked mom about her beautiful diamond engagement ring that she was wearing. It sparkled brilliantly in the light and the daughter to notice of it. She asked, « Mom, why do you wear that ring? » Amie shared the significance of the ring and what it meant to her. I’m sure she even cherished it more as she reflected on the sentimentality of how she received it. They talked all the way to the car and then headed for the game. Ironically, without knowing it, the ring would be the subject of many more discussions in the next few hours and to into the next week
Like a good soccer mom, Amie hung out on the sidelines, cheering on her daughters’ team. Little did she know or imagine that there would come a real trial upon returning home from the match.
After the game, the daughters were driven home by their mother. It was not until Amie arrived back at the house that she realized that her engagement ring was missing! She looked everywhere for it. She knew that she took it with her to the game because Amie remembered talking about the ring as they headed for the car. But what happened to it? It had disappeared! She concluded that it must have fallen off sometime during the soccer game. She checked the car thoroughly but nothing showed up. That’s when the big search began. Amie drove back to the soccer field and checked all of the places where she walked and stood. Still nothing was found. She checked with the other coaches who were playing their teams on the field when she traveled back to the school where the games were played. No ring was turned in. You can only imagine how upset and frustrated she was for having no explanation as to how the ring fell off of her finger.
Amie and her husband Tim continued searching, including acquiring a metal detector to search the field more thoroughly. But still there were no happy findings. They exhausted all of their means for searching and so they let the soccer association and the school building know about the disappearance of the ring, just in case somebody turned it in. Amie also put an ad out in Craigslist, hoping somebody found the ring and would respond to the online appeal.
Amie’s Gorgeous Diamond Engagement Ring Found After A Week Gone Missing!
Well, almost a week would pass, and still the ring did not surface. Amie and Tim were perplexed and saddened, thinking that she may never see the ring again since days had already passed.
Finally, after reviewing my credentials online, Amie reached out to me for help. She shared everything that had happened and everything she did to get word out about the ring’s disappearance. After listening carefully to her story, I asked her a whole list of questions to make sure that I had all of the details down. I also wanted to make sure that she had exhausted all of the search possibilities, including looking in her house more carefully. She and Tim did a careful search and she concluded that there was no way the ring was in the house, especially because she left the house with the ring and when she returned shortly thereafter, she realized that the ring was not on her finger.
I agreed to drive to Ashburn, Virginia and to first search the soccer field and surrounding areas where Amie walked on the day that the engagement ring disappeared. Tim met me out there during the last hour of daylight and he guided me to the places that I needed to detect. It took 3 hours or so to finish my search on all of the grassy areas. Most of the detecting was done in the dark with my headlamp on high beam. The 14 karat gold ring was nowhere to be found. I then resolved to check Tim’s vehicle in the parking lot of the school that we were at, which was the SUV driven on the day that the ring was lost. We talked a little about golf as I thoroughly searched it from top to bottom (Tim is a professional golf instructor! He has met, worked with and / or instructed some notables such as President Obama, Tiger Woods and a young Naomi Watts and more!). I was hoping to have a fun discovery for Tim and Amie by the time I finished looking over the vehicle, but there were no encouraging reports to share.
There were only two more places for me to check after I finished with the field and with the SUV. First, was to search the grass areas along the walkway leading from their resident’s parking lot right up to the front door of their house. Secondly, the other location was to search the inside of the house. I started with the outside areas and worked my way to their front door. I wasn’t shaken or placed in a state of doubt regarding the continued search efforts. I knew that this beautiful piece of jewelry could have fallen off Amie’s finger as she walked back to the house following the soccer match, or that she lost it upon entering her home just prior to her realizing that it had gone missing. In fact, I was so confident that we still had a chance to find the ring and that it may not have disappeared on the field all along, that I specifically requested that Tim return inside the house and begin to search the first floor of the home. He was totally up for the challenge! I told him that in my experience, many times the missing ring ends up being discovered in the house and was never left on the ground outside somewhere. In many situations, it’s waiting for someone to find it inside the house! I also told him that I hoped that he would find the ring because “us husbands” need all of the points that we can earn and this would greatly score him some big numbers if he ended up finding the wedding band! Tim agreed wholeheartedly and he headed inside to conduct a more thorough search based on my encouragement and instructions as to where to carefully look.
Tim and Amie, Happily Ever After Now That Her Lost Ring Was Found!
As I was metal detecting the grass sections, slowly walking closer and closer down the walkway to the front entrance of Tim and Amie’s house, Amie approached me in tears because Tim had just shared that our search efforts at the school came up empty handed. Honestly, she had lost hope at this point. I talked to her and encouraged her by sharing that we still had plenty of areas to check: all of the footage remaining outside for me to detect, and all of the first floor of her home! I expressed my confidence by stating that I sent her husband inside to search and that he could find the ring somewhere in the house and I still had room to discover the ring in the grassy areas along the sides of the walkway. She appreciated my positive stance but she also reminded me that she couldn’t imagine the ring being inside because when she re-entered the house with the girls that afternoon, she wasn’t wearing her ring as she did when she left the house to go to the soccer field earlier in the day. I proposed the idea that perhaps the ring fell off her finger just soon after she arrived back home. It would be improbable but still possible in that small window of time to have lost it on the first floor!
Well, the improbable became possible! Moments after I attempted to infuse some fresh hope into Amie, Tim came strutting out of the house and down the walkway where we were conversing, and he had some terrific news! He got his wife’s attention to look and see what was in his hand! He found the ring! Yes! The diamonds were sparkling everywhere in his palm as I brought the headlamp light near to them! He listened to my instructions to search the floors more carefully and to not leave a spot unchecked! And boy did it pay off! Remember, the engagement ring had gone missing for nearly a week! Well, it was finally found and it was spotted by Tim under the computer table where all of the power cords and power strips were located! At first, I observed that Amie was in such disbelief that Tim had found the ring because she was acting kind of passive and not understanding to what Tim had discovered. I think she thought it was some other ring! So Tim made it a whole lot more clearly by showing her the gorgeous white gold band covered with diamonds on top as he opened his hand some more! Then, it was if the sun had come out in the middle of the night and her countenance started to greatly change! A huge smile overtook the previous dim look of sadness and reality began to set in! The ring was found! She was going to wear it again! It was back in her possession! Amie almost couldn’t believe it, although she began to slowly get convinced that she wasn’t living a dream! She cried many tears of joy and hugged her beloved husband over and over again! It was such an amazing sight to see! I couldn’t be happier for her! Then, I was able to properly gloat a little by reminding her that I did say that the ring could be just feet away from where I was searching, and Tim was the hero to set his eyes on the prize! I high-fived Tim and we all rejoiced with hugs at the discovery!
So, in conclusion, it turned out that the ring did return home from the soccer match. Here is the explanation as to what had happened: When Amie entered the house upon returning from the soccer game with the girls, she took both of their string backpacks and placed them on their designated hooks in the coat closet. Apparently, the ring must have been pulled off her finger by one of the strings of one of the backpacks, it slipped off her finger when she placed the backpacks on the hooks and it hit the hardwood floors and rolled under the computer table where it remained until Tim conducted a more aggressive search! I couldn’t have been happier for the couple! The search was over! The ring was back on Amie’s finger again, and she was one relieved young lady!
That night, the three of us celebrated for a while longer before I packed up my gear and headed back to my car to prepare for the journey home. It was a wonderful search and a very successful ending to my day! Tim and Amie were relieved and overjoyed! The mystery of the lost engagement ring was finally solved once and for all!
CHECK OUT THIS SEARCH VIDEO OF THE RECOVERY OF AMIE’S MISSING RING:
CALL BRIAN RUDOLPH WITH THE RING FINDERS AT (301) 466-8644 AND HE WILL RETURN TO YOU WHAT HAS BEEN LOST!
