It’s been some time since we posted our finds online – we’ve been ring-finding all along but got way behind on reporting our ring and treasure recoveries!
Here’s a photo of a newly-wed who lost his ring in the water at the Fairmont Orchid Hotel, Waikoloa Beach, Hawaii.
He’d been married for 2 days…Thankfully he felt it come off his finger in the water so it was only a matter of seconds for me to find it!
Ring recovery from the water at Fairmont Orchid hotel, Waikoloa, Hawaii
AMAZING does not even begin to describe this couple! I lost my engagement ring and wedding band while playing football with my family at Hapuna Beach one night. I was inconsolable to say the least! We searched the water for a couple hours until night fell and I began to give up hope. Then my dad found these guys later that night. They responded quickly and met us at the beach the next morning. After searching the water for close to two hours, they found BOTH of my rings. I am forever grateful and I cannot recommend them enough!
Nathan and his wife were playing with their son in the lagoon at Hilton Waikaloa while on holiday from California.
Nathan sat in the shallow water next to the sun loungers and dug out sand like a construction digger to the joy of his son. To his own dismay, he realized his platinum wedding ring was missing. Trying to dig again led to nothing – no ring at all.
I got to the hotel early the next morning only to find that the Lavaman Kid’s race was being held in the exact spot his ring had gone missing. Hundreds of little feet were running over-and-over the spot in the water…
Once the event had wrapped up, I got out the detector and looked in the tight area Nathan was sure he’d lost the ring at. Nothing but coins, buttons and the usual stuff lost out of people’s pockets in water. I was using the Garrett Sea Hunter, which as a pulse-induction machine in the water, finds everything even the smallest objects. I searched for an hour with no luck.
It’s our experience that as sure as people are where they lost their treasure, the human mind and memory needs some extra feet added to a search area… I got out the Minelab Excal and broadened my search, this time adding about 20 feet to either side of the lagoon’s beach. I was starting to suspect that the ring may have kicked up during the kid’s race and someone may have found it.
The newly expanded search area yielded a cache of coins all in ankle-deep water. I dug a penny, then a dime, then a quarter. Nathan had been standing in the water watching. I thought to myself that it was a good “sign” – the coins seemed to be increasing in value (and weight) so the next find should be a ring! Seconds later I got a great tone and sure enough, it was Nathan’s ring.
Nathan gave me a hug, shook my hand and said he’d thought it was as good as lost! Overjoyed to find it for him – vacation saved!
“”Team” has a French Ring to It!”
I was in the water, in the middle of a ring search, when my wife called me on my waterproof mobile phone.
Call this number when you’re finished your search! A couple had lost their engagement ring on a small beach near the Mauna Kea hotel.
I raced to the area and ran along the trail to access the beach. The sun was starting to go down and people were hiking out of the area. “Oh, good you’re coming – that lady is besides herself!” called one guy. Another group said, “She’ll be relieved you’re here!” said a group as I walked down to the sand with metal detector and scoop in hand. There seems to have been quite some drama and many people from the beach had been looking with them in the water for their lost gold and diamond engagement ring.
The couple greeted me and we got right in the water and marked out the area they’d been in. The tide was rising so I went as deep as I could stand in the water. Back and forth, I finally hit a target and was sure it was the ring – the couple came racing over and we were all disappointed to see it was a coin. As we were looking at the coin a group of young, French tourists came and in broken English, asked if they could help look. The water was so murky from the surf and low light that any help was welcome!
I kept on my search line and worked around the French “team” as they formed a line and went from deep to shallow with their masks on keeping in a wide line.
Just as we’d exhausted the search area – one of the young men swam up and handed a diamond ring to the fiance. The couple, myself and the French team all burst into shouts of victory – in English and French!
As the French man had broken the line and swam out beyond where we could stand, he’d seen a small flash and swam down to get it – sure enough, the ring had washed out with the tide but was still sitting on top of the hard-packed sand!
We walked back in and got a Team photograph – all giving the Hawaiian “shaka” as our international team symbol of victory. We learned a little French, they learned a little English – and there was a whole lot of International gratitude to all parties involved!
RIGHT WHERE WE SAID IT WASN’T!
Memory is a funny thing, especially under stress. So I often end up finding rings outside where they are “sure” to be!
So was it with Jayce and Jacqueline’s ring!
Jacqueline called me and I could hear in her voice she was feeling almost sick to her stomach.
It was her – and her extended family’s – first day in Hawaii and they’d gone to a tiny beach in the exclusive Kokio area to enjoy the ocean.
She’d noticed her wedding and engagement rings were loose, so carefully took them off – and also took Jayce’s wedding band – and placed them all in a pocket in her bag under the tree her large family was sheltering under.
She was thinking about the rings for a long time while enjoying the water and sunbathing – and sure enough, when she checked they were safe-and-sound, saw that her diamond ring was missing! How could it have fallen out?!
Her husband Jayce and other relatives of the family looked for hours through the sand under the little tree where they had lost the ring. Carefully they made a pile of stones and debris outside the area Jacqueline had been in, as they carefully sifted the sand with their fingers.
When they called me, they’d all but given up hope. I got there just an hour before sunset so got right to work. I decided to search where they were sure she’d lost it. Carefully, I made a careful search, being sure not to leave an inch uncovered. Every time I dug, Jacqueline’s father came over to inspect, disappointed over and over at the pennies and other junk I uncovered. Jacqueline couldn’t watch the repeated false alarms.
As I often do, I expanded my search area beyond where the ring is “sure to be”. I carefully searched the pile of rubble they’d made and listened carefully in case it was under it. “It’s not going to be there,” a few of them said as I got even further from the tree.
Then…I heard gold in the headphones and looked at her father. Jacqueline’s sister saw the look too and I dug with my sand scoop, ran over to see. On my third scoop, a diamond wedding ring…! Her father reached in and pulled it out. Suddenly they were all clapping and laughing – “It wasn’t there all along!” They almost cried in unison!
In the end, what had made the carefully placed ring disappear? A tiny hole in her bag had let the ring slip out.
The family left and I took a few photos of the quiet beach – and the little rock pile and said our little slogan – “We Save Marriages!” Glad to have looked for the ring where it wasn’t!
Digging out what was definitely her big diamond ring, I saw the reason for the strange signal. Somehow an old penny had found itself inside the band, giving me a signal of junk-and-gold at the same time! Happy news for all – Jessica now had tears of joy…
“One Step, Two Step…Gone…”
Scott and Sue are visiting from the mainland and called to say Scott had lost his ring at Two Step, the popular snorkelling and diving spot in Captain Cook. It gets its name from literally two steps going off the lava flow into a bay with a beautiful reef and almost daily, dolphins swimming as they rest from the night’s hunt.
Two-Step is also full of coral and large rocks – and is actually quite a large place – so a lost ring could have fallen in one of a million holes never to be seen again.
Detectors aren’t great at finding rings over coral – first of all, the coil can bang into and damage corals so one has to be very careful when detecting around them, greatly slowing a search. Secondly, it’s hard for a metal detector to find objects over about 16 inches deep and most of the natural holes and spaces in coral goes deeper than that.
Scott and Sue arrived early in the morning and told me that the ring was lost two days earlier. Thankfully, he’d gone down the first step, down the second step and then dove in the water. As he turned to swim back to help his wife, the ring went flying. He and his friends had then spent the next three hours looking for it to no avail.
I geared up with a scuba tank and slipped into the water. The fresh water seeping out of the rocks made it hard to actually see – almost like looking through a clear kaleidoscope at times. Big rocks and piles of broken shell are immediately around the entrance area and I looked in about 8 feet of water – peering into crevasses and crannies, detecting the tiny pukas (holes) made by sea urchins, and the big rocks that had piled up from the recent, large surf. Glimmering from under one rock pile was a large, gold men’s ring hiding among the stones.
Scott helped me out and they couldn’t believe I’d found it having had searched so long in the same place. Scott had the ring for 38 years and said he was going to buy a silicone ring and put this one in a safety deposit box!
Glad to have helped out!
If you’re on the Big Island of Hawaii and have lost something valuable – call us immediatelyat (808) 430 5660!
“Thinking Outside the Box”
We got a funny call for help the other day.
A water bottling company lost a nozzle used to fill their water bottles in one of their cases of water. It fell off the machine after a daily cleaning.
Not only was the stainless steel nozzle in one of the cases, it had certainly fallen INSIDE one of the water bottles which were now packaged and ready for delivery.
1680 CASES of water were being loaded onto the truck for international delivery when an engineer realized the piece had gone for a ride inside one of the bottles…
“Would our detector be able to the find a quarter-sized piece of stainless steel inside a water bottle?” was the first question we got on our call at 5pm.
An engineer did the 2 hour drive over the volcanos from Hilo to us here in Kona with a sample box of water containing a replicated ‘lost nozzle’ hidden in one of the bottles.
We switched on the detector and ran the detector’s coil over the box – a small blip – running over the side was a louder blip – then passing it under the box made a definitive BEEP! Made sense as the piece would have been sitting on the bottom of the bottle…
The engineer’s team as waiting for him – it would be a late night – so he raced back over the mountain and the employees started taking boxes off the 24 palettes – a total of 1680 cases of water, each holding 12 large water bottles. Phew! A clever employee rigged the detector’s coil so boxes of unopened water could be put atop the now upside-down coil.
After 10 palettes (700 cases) of passing boxes of water bottles on and off the detector – a definitive BEEP! Ripping the case open, sure enough, the missing piece of the machine was FOUND!
Great detective work – a real case of thinking outside the box to solve a problem – and glad we could have been of help with our humble metal detector!
Here’s a photo of some employees celebrating with the Garrett Sea Hunter after finding the missing piece with our metal detecting rental service!!!
