David was operating an excavator loading a dump truck on a construction site. He stepped off the excavator to move the truck and to shake his hands of mud and dirt. During this process, he heard a ping and noticed that his wedding band was missing. He searched but was unable to locate it. He moved the dump truck and excavator and called his workmate over to assist him. The workmate went home for a metal detector, and together they searched the site for a few hours but were still not able to find the ring. He returned in the evening with his wife, and they both did a visual search of the site without finding it.
At 8:30 the next morning, he phoned the Kelowna Metal Detectors Club contact number and asked for assistance. I arrived at the site at 9:15 a.m., and asked David to show me exactly where and what happened. The location he showed me had been traveled over with the dump truck and was a muddy mess. He had pretty well given up on finding the ring and expected it to finish up in the landfill on the housing site. He explained that he had been married only 5 weeks and that the ring was a band of yellow gold and a band of white gold that his wife insisted he wear to work. We moved the dump truck, and I set up my Detector and started to work in a grid system. On the second pass, I got a strong signal in 6 inches of oozing mud. Reaching down I felt and recovered the metal rings. I walked over to the dump truck, and David asked me what the problem was. I told him that I had finished, and he responded, “No, don’t quit already!” I showed him the band, and he was ecstatic!