Lost Heirloom Diamond and Gold Cross Necklace Found at the Boardwalk Beach in Santa Cruz

An urgent, distressed phone call at work and an early a.m. wake up found me beating the dawn down to the boardwalk beach. A young lady had  lost a very valuable and sentimental necklace there the previous day. She lived 2-1/2 hours away from the beach and had only noticed it missing shortly before arriving back home. Since time is of the essence and meeting at the beach would not be possible I had to go on her description of the possible location over the phone . . never the best option but that’s what I had to work with as the sun rose over the river mouth and boardwalk. The hunt covered 4 hours and approx. 7000 sq. ft. but in the end, no success. The necklace was not in the area described but I decided to contact the owner again to see if there was anything else that may help to determine if another search was warranted or if it was time to call it. As luck would have it the owner remembered a photo that was taken that day and forwarded it to me. Quite by luck, the picture showed landmarks that gave me clear reference points to determine where she had been on the beach. After analyzing the photo I determined that I may have just missed the area by a small margin so I decided to make another sleep challenged assault the following morning. When an owner puts their full trust and hopes in you you want nothing more than to fulfill that. I wanted very badly to reunite this young woman with her treasure and I wasn’t giving up until all options were exhausted. The heirloom was on it’s third generation and I was determined that it would not be the last. Just prior to leaving I made a last second decision to replace the coil on my detector with a smaller one . . a decision that would prove fateful. I was told that the cross pendant had diamonds set in sterling silver, intuition and experience told me that diamonds are usually set in gold or platinum which would give a much smaller, weaker signal which a smaller coil would do better to pick up. Still dark, I determined my spot and began the hunt. An hour in I got a faint, rough, dirty signal on my detector that would almost always prove to be garbage . . all indications were that the detector was “seeing’ a small piece of foil or maybe even a nail, whatever it was it was not very conductive and it sounded small. I hesitated momentarily as this is a very popular beach and trash is all too common but since the stakes were so high I knew I had to check it out. I scraped gently at the sand and suddenly a short length of silver colored chain sat on the surface. I kneeled down, uncovered and gently pulled at the chain when the beautiful diamond encrusted cross popped out and sparkled in the early morning light ! I had ended the previous days hunt about 6-8′ from where it lay. The smaller coil barely registered the object, I’m afraid to think what might’ve happened had I stayed with the larger coil. In the end all that matters is the heirloom cross was going home and, with a little luck would get a chance to meet the 4th generation.