John Silling, Author at The Ring Finders

June 2023. I received a call late on a Friday afternoon from a gentleman living in far west Saint John’s county saying that he had lost a very sentimental ring while cutting down some Oak tree branches on his property with his wife. No worries, I made plans to drive out to him first thing Saturday morning to find the ring. Arriving at this home he came out to meet us (brought a friend along who was getting into metal detecting) and judging by the way he carried himself, the walk that tells you, “He’s a bad dude!” Ex Marine kind of walk.

He points to the area he was working when he lost his ring and as soon as he sees my friend’s hat “Vietnam Veteran” they begin to bond in only the way ex-military can. He goes on the tell us that he spent several years in North Africa chasing “Bad Guys” and that the ring had a special encoding that outlined his missions. With that he also says “That all I can tell you” well that is all I wanted to hear!

My friend and I go into the wooded area and about ½ hour later I get a strong hit and move the leaves and branches to expose his ring. It was a large palladium ring with some type of etching around the ring. Judging from the size of the ring, he had lost quite a bit of weight, so the ring easily slipped off his finger. Needless to say, he was ecstatic and want to give us a reward but we both said “No” please donate it to a veteran’s organization and “Thank you for your service!”

October 2024. Saturday mid-morning I got a call from a woman whose daughter just lost her engagement ring on a baseball field. Turns out the woman (mom) was with her daughter and son practicing his baseball skills. Mom had told her daughter “Don’t take off your engagement ring and put it in a pants pocket you will lose it” – mom knows best!

Well, the daughter didn’t take that advice and lost her ring while practicing with her brother somewhere on the baseball field. They had been raking the red clay since she had lost the ring with no luck. When I arrived, the mother greeted me and pointed out where her daughter was on the ballfield (mostly out on the right field catching fly balls but also ran the bases a few times). Figuring the ring had only been lost a few hours it would be right on the surface, so I covered the right outfield in about 45 minutes looking for a high signal indication something on the surface with no luck. I then moved onto the infield bases and the red clay. They were still raking the red clay, so I started to run a pattern around the bases starting at home plate going around the based the first time then moving out about 2 feet and proceeding to detect around the bases a second time.

As I passed 2nd base on the 2nd run, I got a very strong hit. When the coil of my metal detector passed over the signal up popped the ring from the red clay. The sun was out and the sunlight hit the diamond, and it just lit up and sparkled. I picked it up and said to the mother and daughter “anyone looking for a diamond engagement ring?” Both Mother and daughter started to scream, and shout followed by a river of tears as they said they thought the ring was gone forever. They wanted to give me a reward but figuring it was so close to Thanksgiving I refused and told them it would be great if they donate the reward to a local food bank which the mother texted me later in the day and said they did.

November 2024. The morning after Thanksgiving 2024 I got a call from a man saying he, his kids and the neighborhood kids were playing basket ball in his driveway after Thanksgiving dinner. Shooting a basket, off flew his wedding band into the grass, he told me they had looked for the ring for over an hour with no luck, but he knew exactly where it had landed. It turns out he was less than 5 miles from my home, so I grabbed my detector and hopped into my car and drove over to his home.

As I arrived he and a buddy came out to greet me and showed me the area where he had lost his ring. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the area because it looked like a bunch of wild hogs had rooted the entire grass area up. I chuckled to myself and thought “well they certainly tried to find that ring!”

I turned my detector on and started to swing about 3 feet from the area they had searched figuring I would make an overlap pattern wider then where they had searched. No more than 2 swings and not even close to the search area and bang a solid hit, brushing the grass away there was his ring. I remember him shaking his head in disbelief and saying “we weren’t even looking in the right place!”

He would not take no for the reward, so I took it and told him I would buy some toys and donate them to Toy’s for Tots which I did. There is nothing better than getting some good Karma especially right before Christmas!