wisconsin lake Tag | The Ring Finders

Ring set recovered in Oconto County Lake

  • from Green Bay (Wisconsin, United States)

My fellow Ring Finder friend, Jeff Wettstein received a voicemail on Tuesday, August 22nd, about 9:45 PM
from Judy sharing that her mother lost her wedding ring in the water by her lake home in Oconto County.

He called her that evening to learn the specifics like how was lost, where it was lost, asking
“Are you sure she lost the ring in the lake?…etc. Judy’s mother is 95 years young and still swims in the
lake with a pool noodle and does have some memory loss. Jeff learned that Judy’s brother from Virginia
was visiting and had been with their mother during the time she was swimming. He also learned the ring
was lost the last week of July…about 3 weeks before Jeff received the call to see if he would be willing to
do the recovery. Jeff was sent a picture of the ring.  It turned out to be a two-ring set, wedding and engagement, soldered together, worn since 1955, which made it even more imperative to be found.

Jeff carefully searched the shallow area first for about 5 hours covering all he could before the water was over his head.  He  found all the usual suspects of junk, a few coins, and a mood ring.    Jeff received more details from Judy’s brother on the path where “Mom” swam. He mentioned to Judy that he would come back another day and would dive for it.

Jeff then reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to participate in diving for the ring since it was not in shallow water.  Jeff has a hookah pump and 60-foot hoses, so we don’t need SCUBA tanks, though we are both certified divers. The regulators and buoyancy compensator (bc) vests are the same as SCUBA, as well as the masks and weights.  One person must stay « up top » to make sure the compressor is operating and the air hose is guarded from curious boaters and jet skiers.

 (They should stay 100′ away, but they don’t always.)I let air out of my vest, but couldn’t go down. It turned out I needed 18 pounds of lead to sink, and I used to need 12, which means I’m fatter, or maybe it was the extra neoprene vest. So, a few more lead shot bags tucked into my bc pockets, and I was ready to work!
We sank a search grid and covered her path, moving the grid after each full sweep. She had swum from their dock to their swimming raft to clean the cobwebs off of it. maybe 60 feet or so.

The water was between 8 and 10 feet deep, and I was submerged at least two hours. I liked it down there, but was searching blind because the silt billowed up. It was all by feel and sound. I followed the white grid pvc pipe with one hand and pressed a metal detecting coil into the lake bed with the other, waving it back and forth. There weren’t many signals, but you have be thorough. After a few false alarms, a nail and a few cans, I heard a signal near the raft and started feeling for it in the silt with my fingers. The signal kept sinking through the pudding, then slowed it’s decent

Re-united!

The beautiful recovered ring set!

The dive team, mom, and daughter.

when it hit thicker layers of mud. I lost it twice, then it stabilized about 18 inches deep in some cold clay. I started grabbing for it and waving handfuls of clay over my coil, hoping the signal wouldn’t sink too deep to recover. Finally, my fist beeped, so I knew something was in there, and it felt like a ring set. I finned to the surface to examine the object in the sun, and there it was! Jeff presented it to the family. Everyone was smiling, so our day was made!

Lost and Found 14k engagement ring, Green Bay, WI

  • from Green Bay (Wisconsin, United States)

I received a call and message from Somer the afternoon of Saturday, October 30th, 2020 (Halloween mind you) sharing she lost her engagement ring in the front yard of her residence. She explained to me the night before friends were over for a social gathering. Somer mentioned she took her ring off to show one of her friends. The friend gave it back while Somer was getting her mail from the mailbox during the evening hours. She decided to put the ring on the mail instead of back on her finger. Well, the ring fell off the mail into the grass (so she strongly believed and thought!) Somer and her fiancé, Nate, spend a better part of the day on their hands and knees looking for ring without success. So, I took my trusty CTX 3030 and began swinging my machine with a small coil since there was a lot of targets in the yard and very close together. My first target rang up “gold” and on the surface…Somer was excited thinking and believing it was her ring…I did too…wrong!!…just under the eyesight of the grass, up popped a nickel. Both Somer and I were thoroughly disappointed. I continued detecting and digging anything that was noting on my machine 2” or less knowing and expecting a surface find. While I was doing my part searching the grass meticulously and the path Somer took from the mailbox to the garage, Nate was meandering on the road near the mailbox, he saw the ring near a manhole cover…right out in the open. None of us have any idea how the ring found its way from the mailbox on the street and not on the grass. Though, I did not find the ring directly, I’d like to believe I shared in the success of rescuing. Ring found and put back on Somer’s hand. She was ecstatic and was a team effort to find. We wish Somer and Nate many wonderful future memories in the years to come. Somer was uncomfortable having her face posted. GB Ring Pic 103020