Rick Smith lost his tungsten carbide ring while playing in the March of Dimes mud volleyball tournament held each year in the Denver suburb of Aurora. A contributor that led to the loss of the ring is the fact that Rick has lost in the neighborhood of 50 pounds since his marriage.
Rick was changing positions when he actually saw the ring leave his finger and fall in the knee deep soupy mud. He and five of his teammates searched for several minutes but at last the officials of the tournament made them play on.
Now nearly two months later while posting my ad for “Ring Finders metal detecting service” on Craigslist I noticed an ad posted by Amy, Rick’s wife, about the loss of the ring. I sent Amy an email and told her I may be able to help find the ring. That evening I received a call from Rick and we made arrangements to meet the following morning at the site of the volleyball tournament. During our phone conversation Rick mentioned that he was contacted by another metal detectorist about searching for the ring and that this gentleman did not have any luck.
Sunday morning we met at 8:00 and Rick showed me the site of the volleyball tournament. This hunt site was HUGE with at least 30 volleyball mud pits set into a field. Rick had a good idea as to which court he was on when the ring came off but he was not 100% positive that the court he was pointing out was the one we needed to search. After a quick look at the vegetation growth and reading of the site we determined which court we needed to search.
Our first pass with the metal detector yielded no signals to dig. The work then began as we started to pry up the dirt clods in the area of where Rick’s loss occurred from the now dried out mud pit. Each dirt clod was about 10 inches in depth and fairly heavy. We moved each clod off to the side of our search site placing them upside down so that we could search the bottom side of the clods with the metal detector. I first scanned the bottom of the newly formed hole and then the clods without any success. Rick was starting to lose hope but we removed more dirt clods and I once again scanned the newly exposed soil, no luck. I made my way over to the clods and the first clod I scanned, the last out of the hole, I received a signal. I pulled the clod up to look at it and there was the edge of Rick’s ring exposed to the daylight. I let Rick see the clod and the edge of the Ring, he as ecstatic! Though this ring was not a very expensive ring, it was HIS wedding ring and he finally got it back.
Ring recovered September 25, 2011.
