Doug Hardy, Author at The Ring Finders

Wedding Ring Recovered in Raleigh

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I got text from Steven, a nice gentleman who lives only about two miles from my house. He and his wife had been moving firewood from the front of their house (where the logs had been dumped) to a shed area in the back yard and sometime during this activity, she lost her wedding ring. We made arrangements to meet at their house so I could find her ring. They showed me the area where the firewood had been and where it was stacked now. Seemed simple enough to search just that area, since that was the area where they’d been working.

While I was searching, Steven and I had been chatting about our common interest – history. After maybe 45 minutes with no luck, Steven invited me to see his workshop. Turns out that Steven collects antique tools and wanted to show me. While we were there, I had a thought and asked if he or his wife had checked the gloves she was wearing. He said they both had checked, but I asked if checking one more time would be ok. He agreed and with my handheld detector, found that the ring was still in the finger slot of one of the gloves. We were all surprised, but it’s always a good feeling to recover something that means a great deal to someone. Another happy ending!

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Wedding Ring Recovered in Falls Lake

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I got a text from Jonathan, whose wife had dropped a ring over Labor Day weekend while standing in the water. Ironically, she was getting ready to go tubing and took her wedding and engagement rings off to hand them to someone in the boat for safekeeping. The engagement ring made it into the boat, but the wedding ring did not. Although the water was only about mid-thigh in depth, Falls Lake only has a foot or so of visibility even at its clearest, so spotting the ring visually was out of the question. Jonathan immediately dropped a pin on his phone to mark the spot and took pictures of the shoreline where they were. They felt around on the bottom to see if they could locate it, but the bottom was covered in sticks, leaves, mud, and small rocks, which made a “hand-search” all but impossible.

Jonathan contacted me and we made arrangements to ride over in his boat to the spot where the ring had been dropped. Although Falls Lake is relatively free of trash, it isn’t completely clean. After searching for more than an hour, I had three aluminum cans, three pull tabs, two bottle caps, a quarter, and a penny for my efforts. I felt like I had scoured the depth that Jonathan described pretty completely and decided to search a little shallower. At the new depth, I scooped up the ring in about 10 minutes. I thought Jonathan was amazed until he called his wife to tell her – she was over the moon! Definitely a happy ending to this story.

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Wedding Ring Recovered in Durham

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I got a text from a gentleman who had lost his wedding ring while mowing the grass. He said he had lost it about two weeks earlier and had searched for it (including borrowing a metal detector), but had been unable to find it. In the two weeks it had been lost, we’d had a number of major rainstorms, so I expected the ring at best, to be sitting on top of the soil and at worst, to have started to sink down into the soil. We made arrangements to meet the same day, and arriving at his house I could see that roughly half of his yard had been mowed and half was a little “overgrown”. He explained he was concerned that if it had fallen off in an unmowed area and he ran across it, the mower blade could have flung it elsewhere in the yard. For that reason, he stopped the mowing and started the search. When I arrived, he showed me where he was when he noticed the ring was no longer on his finger. Given that clue as a headstart, I began grid searching the yard, making sure to overlap my sweeps. On the fifth pass I got a rock solid signal and checking with my pinpointer, saw the ring. It was not visible from above – it had fallen through the grass – but was sitting on the soil, covered with grass clippings.

Every ring recovery is special, but this one was especially nice. He was overjoyed to get his ring back, but his wife was absolutely beside herself. Very glad to be a part of another happy ending!

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Wedding Ring Recovered in Durham!

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I got a call from DJ, who had lost his wedding ring playing beach volleyball on a sand court. DJ and his wife had not been married long and while every wedding ring is important, “new” ones are just a little more special. He explained that he’d actually been driving home with his wife (who also plays volleyball) when he noticed that his ring was MIA. I met DJ out at the court the next morning and started searching. The good news is that there is almost zero trash on a beach volleyball court, so other than a nickel and a metal bead, the ring was a straightforward recovery. You can tell from the picture that DJ was ecstatic about having the ring back on his finger – another happy ending!

 

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Wedding Ring Recovered in Chapel Hill

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I received a call from a PhD student in Chapel Hill (ironically, a student at Duke, not UNC). He had been playing basketball on an outdoor court and when he made a pass to another player, he flung his rings (plural) off his finger. While the player did catch the ball, the rings disappeared. It was late in the day and he was unable to find them before it got dark, which is when he contacted me. We agreed to meet first thing in the morning because it was a public court – I didn’t want anyone finding it before we had a chance to recover it for him. We met at the court and that’s when he explained the full story. The rings had come off, passed through a chain link fence, and were lost in the brush and briers beyond the fence. He was able to find the first ring on his own, probably 10-12 feet beyond the fence. In searching for the second ring, it became clear that the amount of trash and brush was making the recovery more difficult than it needed to be, so I started to work on cutting out the briers and vines so we could actually see the ground. After probably 30 minutes of “trimming”, I had exposed enough of the ground that we were able to see the ring and grab it. Another happy ending!

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Class Ring Recovered – Wake Forest

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I was contacted by a gentleman up in Wake Forest. He had been watering plants in the yard and noticed when he was through that one of his rings was missing. He described it as a man’s class ring, which was great news (a man’s class ring is large and if the person knows roughly where they lost it, it is usually a straightforward recovery). Even better, he had a second, slightly larger class ring to show me what I was looking for. (The larger ring was for his PhD degree and the smaller one – the one that was lost – was for his undergraduate degree. Other than the size difference, they were identical.) He had thoroughly searched all the usual places (pockets, floors, counters, trash, etc.) and finally concluded that it must be outside, which is when he called me. He showed me the path he had followed when watering and mentioned that he had stopped only once, to fill up a pail with water. I started where he started and within 5 minutes I had located the ring. It had come off his finger when he was filling the pail and had fallen through the grass onto the dirt. Given the way the grass had grown up in that area, there was no way it could be seen from above. Anyway, recovered the ring for him – another happy ending!

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Lost Wedding Ring Found – Franklinton

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I got a text from Julie, who explained that her husband had lost his rings. Rings plural? She explained that there were two rings that had been lost – one 5 1/2 years ago and a replacement ring that was lost a few days ago (more on that in a minute). It was the replacement ring that she had texted me about. They had searched for the original ring and been unable to find it.. I made the hour’s drive to her house and she explained the situation a little further. The newly lost ring (the replacement) had been tossed (long story) and Julie showed me the area of the woods where she thought it would have landed.

Julie then explained that right after they moved into this house 5 1/2 years earlier, their two dogs stumbled onto a yellow jacket nest in the woods. Julie grabbed one of the dogs and started to address that problem while her husband went after the other dog. The yellow jackets attacked him as well and in the process of swatting them away as he ran toward the house, his ring came off. They had looked for it at the time, but were unable to locate it. So, first ring lost 5 1/2 years earlier and replacement ring lost two days ago.

I spent probably two hours scouring the woods where she had pointed me, but no ring. Nails, bottle caps, pop tops, and other common things, but no ring. After talking with Julie again, we decided that moving the search closer to the house (into the yard) would be a good strategy. I turned my machine back on and almost immediately Julie yelled that she had found the replacement ring. I was disappointed that I hadn’t found it, but since the main thing is to get the owner and the lost item back together, it was still a great outcome. With the replacement ring found, I started looking for the “original”. I was only able to spend about 30 min that day, but promised to come back and try again.

On my return visit, I started where the yellow jacket nest had been and slowly worked my way toward the house. After about an hour of searching, I got a solid signal and uncovered the original ring. During the time between loss and recovery, it had sunk 3 or so inches down into the dirt and was additionally covered by leaf litter. The picture shows the ring and an excited Julie. Another happy ending!

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Lost Hearing Aid Found – Raleigh

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I got a call from Don, a nice gentleman who had lost a hearing aid while working outside on his property. I said I’d be happy to come out and see if I could find it for him — I then checked the property on Google Maps. Holy Cow! Don’s property was about 8 1/2 acres! (I could search for days and not cover it all.) Don met me when I arrived and explained that he knew exactly where the hearing aid had gotten lost. He’d been pruning a bush and when he turned his body, a branch snagged the little wire that connects the “in-your-ear” part of the hearing aid with the “behind-your-ear” part. He felt it come off and after checking his ear, was positive he had the location nailed down. He put a little landscaping flag in the ground so I could search in the correct spot. The most likely scenario was that the hearing aid had been “launched” by the branch into the bush he’d been trimming, so that’s where I started my search. Using two different detectors, I spent probably 20 minutes covering that bush top to bottom and side to side — no luck. I turned to back out a little bit and widen my search, when I saw the hearing aid caught on a branch, most probably the branch that plucked it out of his ear in the first place.

I took the hearing aid over to Don who was extremely happy that he didn’t have to buy a replacement (if you don’t wear hearing aids, you may not know – these things are not cheap!). It’s usually about putting a ring back on a finger, a necklace back around a neck, or a bracelet back on a wrist, so putting a hearing aid back in an ear was a first for me! Another happy ending!

 

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Wedding Ring Found – Cary!

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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I got a text from Vinit, who explained that he had been playing volleyball on a sand court and lost his platinum engagement ring. He had posted signs around the court in case someone else playing on that court found it, but when he texted me, no one had called him. This was one of those rare occasions when the person knew exactly where they were when the jewelry was lost, the item was lost in sand (which is great to detect in), and it was in a place with almost no trash to complicate things. It took me only about 10 minutes to find Vinit’s ring and get it back on his finger where it belonged. Quick recovery, happy ending!

 

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Wedding Ring Found – Clayton!

  • from Raleigh (North Carolina, United States)
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We don’t get much snow here in this part of NC, so two small snows in the span of about 10 days was pretty unusual. Even more unusual was the call I got from Alex, who had lost his wedding ring while sledding! Alex’s neighborhood has some hills, but unfortunately his property isn’t situated the right way, so he was sledding on a neighbor’s property. After one of the sledding runs, his hands were wet and when he shook the water off, the ring made a quick exit onto the hillside. Alex had secured a metal detector to try and find the ring himself, but had not had any luck; at that point, he contacted me. To his credit, he made a note of several nearby visible features, so when he took me to the area where he thought the ring would/should be, I had a solid starting point based on his landmarks.

The grass was similar to what you’d find on a golf course fairway, and being wintertime, it was all brown. It only took 15 minutes or so to locate the ring, which was — surprisingly! — very close to where he thought it had come off. The ring had fallen through the dead layer of grass and was sitting flat on the soil, maybe 3 inches below the top of the grass. Those of us on TheRingfinders joke that “it’s never where they think it is”, so it was refreshing to find Alex’s lost ring quickly and easily. The sooner I can get the lost item back to the owner, the better. Another happy ending!

 

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