House and Car Key FOB Lost in the Surf – Found and Returned North Myrtle Beach SC

I got a phone call and referral from my son-in-law on some lost keys. He gave me the location and details and I met Kimberly about 10 minutes later on the beach. Kimberly told me that her brother and cousin had been fishing about 11pm the night before and when her brother got back to the resort he didn’t have his house or BMW key FOB. Figuring out the tides for the previous evening I realized I had a very short window of opportunity to try and find the keys before high tide. There was a big drain pipe on the beach and that was the reference point both as the center point for north and south (both about 40 yards wide) and the starting point seaward. By the time I started my grid line the end of the pipe was already underwater and the waves were building. After about an hour of searching I called Kimberly and left a message that I’d be back in about 3 hours to work the outgoing tide.

Around 5 o’clock I arrived back on the beach and started working the outgoing tide, still a little rough but manageable. After another hour and a half of grid searching and finding some change, bottle caps, pull tabs and some wire I got a good strong shallow signal. Bingo, I had the keys in my scoop. I took a picture and sent it to Kimberly asking her “do these look familiar”. I then called her and asked if she got my text, she looked at her text messages and I could hear her in the background tell her family “he found the keys!!! She came back on the phone, thanked me and said her brother was still in town and she was going to call him and give him my number. Within a minute Kevin was on the line saying I can’t believe you found them, I thought I’d never see them again. We met in the Walmart parking lot 10 minutes later and Kevin had his keys back. Kimberly had told me that Kevin was in the US Army and stationed at Fort Bragg, so when we met I gave him a hand salute and shook his hand. He had had a spare key FOB but his dog had pretty much chewed it up but it could still be used. When I handed him his keys back he hit the lock/unlock buttons on the FOB and surprisingly after being buried in the sand submerged below the surf for roughly 18 hours the key FOB still worked!!!!

Kevin, from one VET to another – best of luck to you in your career and stay safe!!!

Jim

 

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