Lost Ring ... Laguna Beach, CA. ... Found in Sand

Friday .. January 10, 2014

It’s winter in So. Calif. and people are still going to the beach. I was in Huntington Beach doing some detecting when I got a call from Scott. He was in Laguna Beach at a small cove located at the end of Moss St. He and his wife Shauna had recently moved here from Denver and had spent the day at this beautiful beach with their two daughters. Scott’s platinum wedding band slipped off while throwing a football. It was getting dark when he called me and I asked him if he could wait 35 or 45 minutes as I was 15 miles up the coast. The tide had already peaked so we still had a chance to locate it. When we met he walked me down to the location he thought it came off. I stood back about 25 feet and told him I needed to adjust my settings on my detector. When I put my coil down on the sand to take the first swing I got a hit (metal tone on my detector).There it was a nice platinum ring. It was from past experiences that I chose to start my search  back from where he thought it came off his finger. This time it worked to make it a quick recovery.  They were very surprised and happy to have the ring recovered. Shauna told me that this ring has quite a story. This was the 7th or 8th time it has been lost and found. Scott told me he was going to have it resized, but he made sure he put my phone number in his contacts.

Two days later, Sunday 1-12-14 , I received another call from Jim about another lost platinum ring at another small cove in Laguna Beach. I drove from La Jolla Shores, CA. and we met at 7pm. The tide was high. He and his wife had come to the beach with their two kids to explore the tide pools earlier at low tide.

Jim”s story was different than Scott’s as he did not realize his ring was missing till he and his family were diving home. The ring would have been lost at low tide if it was lost at the beach in the sand. He did review some photos the had taken while at the beach  and the ring was on his finger. I did a grid search that evening for more than an hour and returned the next day an hour and a half before a minus .5 ft. low tide. This time I spent 3 hours searching all the sand area the size of a football field. This year I have found about seven rings after they were lost in the water. Most were lost at high tide and they were still recoverable even several days after they were lost.  This time I was unable to recover Jim’s ring. All searches are not successful.

I have several top of the line detectors. My favorite is the Minelab CTX 3030 and I use it for most of ring searches.