The Ring Finders Blog

Gretchen’s family heirloom gold pocket watch hunter’s case pendant, adorned with diamonds and three small blue sapphires, was passed down to her through her family. The pendant originally belonged to her grandmother, Francine, who received it from her husband, Jack, in 1959 for their 20th wedding anniversary. With the professional metal detecting assistance of Brian Rudolph, this treasured family heirloom—once feared to be lost forever—was successfully recovered and returned to Gretchen.

Gretchen proudly poses with her treasured family heirloom pendant, which she had begun to believe was lost forever. Professional metal detectorist and item recovery specialist Brian Rudolph proved otherwise, successfully recovering the precious piece and returning nearly 70 years of family history to Gretchen’s hands.

Brian Rudolph, Lost Item Recovery Specialist (also known as THE RING HERO) searches Land, Water, Sand, Snow, Leaves, Cliffs, Houses and Vehicles. He Will Find Your Lost Item! Call ASAP (301) 466-8644!

By Brian Rudolph – Professional Ring Finder & Metal Detectorist
Owner, METAL DETECTING ADVENTURES INC (Clarksburg, Maryland)

For Gretchen, the beautiful gold pendant she wore around her neck was far more than a piece of jewelry. It was a treasured family heirloom with a story reaching back generations.

The large gold pendant—apparently fashioned from the hunter’s case cover of an antique pocket watch—had belonged to Gretchen’s grandmother, Francine. In 1959, Francine’s husband, Jack, presented it to her in celebration of their 20th wedding anniversary. Decorated with diamonds and three small blue sapphires, the unusual piece eventually made its way down through the family to Gretchen.

She wore it often, and people regularly noticed the distinctive pendant dangling from her neck. They would compliment it and ask about its history.

Recently, while wearing the heirloom as she ran errands and walked her dog, someone once again noticed the pendant and complimented her on it. Ironically, Gretchen had already been thinking that she needed to have the clasp tightened or replaced. She was concerned that one day the pendant might come loose from the chain and disappear.

Then, almost as if her concern had been a warning, that is exactly what happened.

While out walking her dog from her Washington, DC home to a nearby park, Gretchen suddenly realized something was missing from around her neck.

The pendant was gone!

She was crushed.

This wasn’t simply an expensive piece of gold jewelry decorated with diamonds and sapphires. It represented her grandparents, her family history and memories extending back nearly 70 years to when the pendant was presented to her grandmother.

Gretchen immediately began searching. She retraced nearly three-quarters of a mile of her walk, carefully looking everywhere she could think of, but there was no sign of the family heirloom.

Over the next several days, she continued looking. She went out with flashlights, scanned the ground and retraced her steps over and over again. Yet with each passing day, her hope of ever seeing the pendant again began to fade.

Eventually, Gretchen went online searching for professional help and found my metal detecting and item recovery services through THE RING FINDERS, an elite international directory of metal detectorists.

She called me, and we went through every detail surrounding the disappearance.

Unfortunately, this was not going to be a simple search.

There was a possibility that the pendant hadn’t even been lost during the dog walk. Gretchen had also visited a dermatology office and another public location before returning home. Still, the most likely scenario was that the pendant had fallen somewhere along her neighborhood walk or inside the park, where she had crossed two very large grassy fields with her dog.

Gretchen desperately wanted me to begin searching right away, but because of the enormous amount of ground involved, this was the kind of recovery operation that required a significant block of uninterrupted time. We had to wait several more days before I could dedicate the time necessary to conduct such a tedious and methodical search.

Retracing someone’s walking path with a metal detector is much more difficult than it might sound. People generally don’t remember whether they walked several feet farther to the left or right at any particular point. Being off by only a few feet could mean passing right by the lost item.
I told Gretchen that I would do everything I could to get that pendant back around her neck.

When I arrived at her Washington, DC home, we began by reconstructing the entire journey.

Gretchen showed me where she had walked from her house and down the block. We turned the corner, and she pointed out a grassy area where she had bent over to pick up after her dog.

That immediately became one of our possible loss locations because leaning forward could have caused the weakened clasp to release.

From there, we continued toward the entrance of the park. We walked across a long field, eventually turned left and continued another considerable distance until we reached the approximate location where Gretchen first noticed that the pendant was no longer hanging from her chain.

Once I had seen the entire route and understood the challenge ahead of me, we returned to Gretchen’s house.
Now it was time to search. But before I began the adventure, I asked if I could pray with Gretchen, asking the Lord to favor me in helping my clients recover her precious symbol of love which connected her with her grandparents. She was completely enthused by my suggestion and we began to pray. Then, when we finished, we said goodbye and I returned to my vehicle out front.

I pulled out my metal detecting equipment and began checking the grassy areas along both sides of the sidewalk leading down the block.

Once I determined that section was clear, I returned to my vehicle and drove around the corner to the area in front of a neighbor’s house where Gretchen had bent down while walking her dog.

Again, there was no pendant—only miscellaneous metal hidden within the high grass.

My next destination was the park.
I drove around the neighborhood and parked as close as possible to the location where Gretchen had first realized the pendant was missing. I wasn’t convinced that she had necessarily lost it there. Many times, people don’t notice an item is missing until long after it actually fell off. Still, it was an important place to begin, and from there I could methodically backtrack her route.

I loaded my equipment, including my grid-line tapes, into my wagon and headed toward the first search zone.

It was an extremely hot day, and looking at the amount of ground ahead of me, I was certainly hoping for success sooner rather than later!

The first area measured approximately 45 feet by 75 feet. I had taken measurements while Gretchen and I originally walked the route together, which allowed me to establish a controlled search grid.
I carefully worked the entire zone, making certain that I didn’t miss a square inch.

Nothing.

By the time I completed that section, I was already hot and worn out, but there was still a tremendous amount of ground left to cover.

I repositioned my grid tapes parallel to a fence separating the park from some old historical sites. This portion became considerably more challenging. I needed to search a corridor approximately 20 feet wide and continue extending it because neither Gretchen nor I could know precisely how far to the left or right she had walked with her dog.

To make matters worse, the ground contained an enormous amount of metal.

Every few feet—and sometimes even more frequently—I had to stop and investigate another signal. There were all kinds of metallic targets hidden just beneath the grass line. The constant signals slowed the search considerably, but I also knew what kind of response I was hoping to hear and how a large gold surface target might sound through my detector.

I completed approximately 20 feet of width.

Still nothing.

My next move was to reposition the grid closer to the fence and continue searching parallel to it toward the corner, where Gretchen’s route eventually changed direction into another section of the park.

I had only been detecting this new section for a few minutes when suddenly I received a very attractive signal.

I stopped.

I looked carefully at what my detector was telling me and leaned down toward the grass.

As I moved the blades of grass aside, something came into view.

GOLD!

There, hidden in the grass, was an almost three-inch-diameter circular gold disc.

I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

IT WAS GRETCHEN’S LOST FAMILY HEIRLOOM!

I absolutely flipped out with excitement! After all of those days of searching, all of the uncertainty about where it might have been lost, the enormous amount of ground that needed to be covered and all of those distracting metal signals, the nearly 70-year-old family treasure was finally found!

And the timing couldn’t have been better.

Gretchen had offered to bring me some cold water and was expected to arrive shortly. Now I had something much more exciting waiting for her than an update on my search.

I had her grandparents’ precious anniversary heirloom!

When Gretchen arrived, I surprised her with the recovery.
She completely freaked out!

For a moment, she was practically speechless. She was in genuine shock that the pendant she had begun to believe was gone forever was suddenly back in her hands.

The nightmare was over.

The two of us gave thanks to the Lord for answering our prayer that we lifted up to him before I started the search back at her house. We were so grateful for the Lord’s favor upon me to help her get this irreplaceable keepsake back into her hands!

What made the recovery particularly emotional was that Gretchen had carried tremendous guilt over losing something so important to her family.

The pendant wasn’t merely an object from the past. It represented her connection to her grandparents and to memories of a time when they were still alive.

Gretchen immediately FaceTimed her husband and showed him what I had recovered. He was equally stunned. He hadn’t believed this recovery operation had much of a prayer!

Even Gretchen had expressed doubts earlier about whether I would ever find it.

At the time, I jokingly told her, “Bite your tongue!”

Now I had made believers out of both of them!

For me, there was another fascinating part of this story that went beyond recovering the pendant itself.

Before leaving, I told Gretchen that I suspected there might be more history behind this family heirloom than she realized.

The pendant was unusually large for a traditional piece of women’s jewelry, and its design immediately looked familiar to me. It strongly resembled the front cover of an antique men’s hunter-case pocket watch, possibly dating from the late 1800s or early 1900s.

I was familiar with this type of design because years earlier my son had received an antique pocket watch from me and his grandparents with a case somewhat similar in appearance.

That led me to an intriguing theory.
Could the original pocket watch have belonged to an earlier generation of Gretchen’s family—perhaps even her great-grandfather? If the watch eventually stopped working, could the decorative gold cover have been preserved and transformed into a pendant rather than allowing such a meaningful family object to disappear?

Perhaps Gretchen’s grandfather, Jack, had the back sealed with gold and added the special inscription honoring his wife, Francine, for their 20th wedding anniversary. The diamonds and blue sapphires may then have been incorporated to give the piece a more elegant and feminine appearance.

It is only a theory, of course, but the possibility could explain the pendant’s unusual size and distinctive pocket-watch-style design.

Gretchen loved the idea and decided that she would investigate the history further. I recommended a pocket watch specialist in Bethesda, Maryland who might be able to examine the piece and provide additional insight into its age and original purpose.

Perhaps another mystery surrounding this extraordinary family treasure is still waiting to be solved!

What mattered most that day, however, was that something irreplaceable had been saved.

Had the pendant remained hidden in that park, the grass would eventually have grown over it. Soil, leaves and weather would have slowly concealed it, and within another season or two, a treasured piece of Gretchen’s family history might have disappeared beneath the ground indefinitely.
Instead, it was back where it belonged—with Gretchen.

There are few things more rewarding to me as a professional metal detectorist and item recovery specialist than recovering something whose sentimental value can never be replaced.

Long after I left Washington, DC that day, I continued carrying the excitement of this recovery with me.
Another search was successful.

Another mystery was solved.

And most importantly, another precious family heirloom was preserved for future generations.

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