Lost Platinum Ring Found in San Jose

The ring had been lost on Saturday and the call came in on Tuesday. The owner had been at a park outside of my area playing catch when the ring had apparently fallen off. This particular park has a strict no digging rule but I knew the ring would only be hidden down in the grass and not underground. When we met there the following day the owner noticed that the lawn had been mowed since the loss, an unsettling detail as the mower can pick up and fling objects. I was seriously hoping this had not happened to the ring. If it had then all bets would be off as far as where the ring would be. I put that thought out of my mind and proceeded to systematically hunt the area of lawn where the owner thought the ring had come off. I noticed very quickly that this park had not been detected in a long time. There were targets of all kinds saturating the lawn area. I tried to narrow down how many times I had to stop and squat down, paw at the grass looking for a glint then stand and resume searching by only checking signals that matched specific criteria. This is risky as you could miss a target like a platinum ring this way but checking every signal just wasn’t feasible time wise. After about an hour I had hunted as far in one direction as I wanted for the moment and resumed searching in the other direction from a common starting point. After 30 minutes in and still no ring I was beginning to wonder if the lawn mower had thrown the ring or if my strategy had backfired when I got a candidate signal and squatted down. The grass was about 3-4″ long and I could see absolutely nothing, I pulled the grass aside and was about to grab my pinpointer when I caught a glint down in the tangle of roots on the ground. Pulling more grass aside the ring popped up and I’m pretty sure I let out a huge sigh of relief. There is a huge mental aspect to ring finding and you can easily go astray with self doubt or a loss of concentration. Every search has it’s own variables and this one was considerably more challenging than I’d hoped it would be going in but I had a strategy built from experience and it payed off. The ring went home. Thank you. peace