Lost & Found Category | The Ring Finders

I received an email from Molly last night at about 11:00 PM asking for my help in finding her diamond wedding band. She had included a general location for the loss. I emailed her back letting her know that if she could narrow down the search area for me, I would go and look immediately. The reason for this immediate action is because this beach is cleaned regularly by the county, and is one of the cleanest beaches I know of. I knew that if I didn’t get on this recovery right away, the chances of a recovery would diminish rapidly. I waited for her reply, but received none, so I decided to go and do a search anyway. I searched the whole area that I figured out from her email, and near the end of an hour I got a good signal, but not a gold signal, scooped it, and in the scoop was a diamond eternity ring, but it looked kind of like a kid’s ring, but who am I to make a judgement; I had found a diamond eternity ring (with what I found out when I got home, were not real diamonds). I took a picture of it and sent it to Molly. When I woke this morning I had an email from Molly stating that was not her ring with a picture of a much nicer ring. I let her know that I would go back hoping that the county had not cleaned the beach today.

Molly was not able to meet me at the beach because of her work schedule. She drew a map of the area, and tried to explain where the loss happened in more detail, and also had her husband call to help me understand better. I realized that the night before, I had been searching in the wrong area. When I got to the beach this morning, the first thing I saw was the county tractor towing it’s machine. Right away I didn’t feel good, but went out to search anyway. When I got to the area I saw that the stretch that I was going to search had not been touched by the machine; what a relief that was. I had a fairly short time to search because of a previously arranged search for this same morning, so I tried to make the best of my time. I was getting close to having to leave, when my phone rang, it was the other person I was supposed to help in 30 minutes. She called to let me know that she had found her ring, and I did not need to go there to search. Now I was free to do a very thorough search for Molly’s ring. About 2 hours later I got a good nonferrous signal, put the scoop in, and pulled up a very pretty diamond ring. I knew I had found it this time! I sent another picture to Molly of the new ring, and she sent back an excited affirmation. We arranged to meet after she got off of work to return her ring. When I met Molly she was so happy. She said that she and her husband had just celebrated their 1st wedding anniversary this month. She had agonized over the ring’s loss for 2 days, and I was glad to see her joy restored; another great day!

 

If you lose your ring or other metal item of value, call as soon as possible. I will work hard, using the most up to date metal detectors, to help you find what you thought might never be found again. I search, Beverly Hills, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, Northridge, Pasadena, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, Seal Beach, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Torrance, Venice Beach, and all parks, yards, gardens, and ponds (to 5 foot depths) in all of Orange County, all of Los Angeles County, and Ventura County.

While playing football with friends at the beach along the water, this young man’s wedding ring flew off and disappeared in the sand.  With the help of his family and friends, they tried searching for it with no success.

After returning to their hotel and browsing the internet on how to find a lost ring, they discovered The RingFinders website and that’s when we received their plea for help as we offer our services to all the beaches in the the Naples area as well as Fort Myers and Sanibel.

To avoid the next morning’s traffic, we all agreed to meet that evening even though it was near midnight by the time we arrived at the beach.

My wife and I both began searching with our top-of-the-line Minelab metal detectors.  In less than 30 minutes, the lost ring had been found and returned!

We are happy that this most recent ring found and returned makes our 44th documented ring recovery for our book of smiles.

Between my wife and I, we have several years of professional metal detecting experience at South Florida area beaches–which include Vanderbilt Beach, Del-nor Wiggins Pass, Barefoot Beach, Naples Pier, Clam Pass, Bonita Springs, Lowdermilk Park, Lover’s Key, Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Captiva Beaches.

 

 

 

While swimming at Vanderbilt Beach on Sunday 4/22/18, Michele suddenly and unexpectedly felt one of her beautiful 14k gold rings come off her finger.  For nearly two hours dozens of people, some from her group and other swimmers nearby, frantically searched the crystal clear water with masks and snorkels, but could not find the lost ring.  Despite incoming tide and increasing wind and surf, Michele did the right thing, she made note of several reference points and calmly remained in place while others sought help and arranged for location services.  Upon my arrival Michele described the ring and we carefully reviewed reference points, both of which made for a quick and successful recovery.  Notwithstanding use of $3k+ in search equipment, I found the ring within seconds, mere inches from where she was and had remained standing.  A picture is worth a thousand words…

This ring find began when I got a call from Gordon who resides in Anchorage Alaska and was vacationing and visting friends at the Marriott Ko Olina. While going for a snorkel in the lagoon his wedding band came off and he assumed it must have come off just as he was entering the water. Traffic was a mess and it took me nearly 2 hours to get to Ko Olina from town. When I arrived Gordon met me at the Tiki Bar and we walked down to the beach to hunt for the ring. It was sure to be easy if the ring came off early otherwise scuba tomorrow would have been the option. I started a grid search from the water’s edge to chest deep water. I just cleaned this lagoon out a few weeks back so the first two targets were shiney new pennies. On about the 4th leg I got a nice tone in knee deep water and one scoop down there was Gordon’s gold ring in the scoop. I picked the ring from the scoop and held it out so Gordon could see it where he was sitting on the shoreline. An eruption of applause roared through the beachgoers and Gordon came running down to get his ring. Comments of “Awesome” and “That is so cool” echoed through the crowd and all Gordon could say was “I’m out of the dog house now”. Another vacation saved. Aloha to Gordon!

Jackie was playing baseball practice in the backyard with her grandson. Jackie was the pitcher tossing the ball across the back yard. Didn’t take long she noticed her gold ring that her mother had purchased for her was missing.

After days of searching and crawling on hands and knees and then searching with flash lights they finally gave up and called the ring finders. I stopped by and after almost an hour of hunting the back yard we came up with the family heirloom. Needless to say Jackie was very happy that the Tenacious Treasure Tracker saved the day.

Jim was working in the front yard. Doing a little spring time front yard clean up. After a couple hours of hauling trash bags of branches and debris to the back yard Jim notices his wedding ring is missing.

Jim contacted Ring Finders after searching for hours and not finding the ring.  I stopped by and found the ring in his front yard along the sidewalk in the mulch. Tenacious Treasure Tracker saves the day.

“I am overjoyed at the fact that Brian Henry was able to find my wedding band so quickly. Like many, I was doing yard work last weekend and my ring was lost. I searched through bags and bags of trimmings, weeds, leaves, etc… I crawled around my yard multiple times looking somewhat foolish each day since. No luck. I called Brian via ringfinders website. He came by my house on schedule and less than 15 min later was knocking on my door having found the ring! Thank you- you are highly recommended!!!” ~Jim

Sara-Kate called me on Monday, Apr 16^th, saying she had lost her engagement ring and asked if I could help try and find it. No problem I thought, then Sara proceeded to fill in the details. The first issue was that she had been driving to one of three places when she took her ring off and put it in her lap while she applied lotion to her hands. She was sure her ring fell off her lap and out of the truck when she made one of her stops on the way to the beach. The problem was she wasn’t sure which part of her trips she applied the lotion. She went on to say that she went from her house to her friend’s house, both in Wilmington, NC, from there to a gas station on Carolina Beach, NC, and then finally to the Freeman Park beach at the north end of Carolina Beach, NC . This search just got a little more complicated. She told me she checked, rechecked and checked again for her ring inside the truck with no luck. She had talked to her friend and asked if she would look in her driveway, which had negative results. She also called the gas station, who didn’t return her call. So, this pretty much left the loss at the beach, or somebody picked it up in the parking lot at the gas station. The second issue was the beach is located in Freeman Park, and North Carolina has rules about metal detecting in Parks. The rules aren’t specific to National, State or City Parks; the guidelines are just “Park Rules,” which states “metal detectors are not allowed in any park area except to locate lost personal property when authorized by a Special Activity Permit.” I know that beach is heavily detected, in fact, I’ve detected there myself, but this time I wasn’t willing to get arrested. I called the park and was told that it wouldn’t be a problem to detect there, so that was good. The third issue was this particular beach can be driven on, with a four-wheel vehicle. When Sara-Kate lost her ring, it was at night and very dark on the beach so she wasn’t positive where she parked and got out to walk to their campsite. Luckily, it was high tide when she lost it, so I didn’t have to worry about it being in the ocean. I also had to consider that it might have been run over and pushed deeper into the soft sand, so I had to dig the deep targets as well.

With the park permission out of the way, the only thing left to do was search the beach. We tentatively made plans to meet around 7 p.m. but she’s a mother of two children, ages 5 and 1, and children don’t follow schedules. So, we decided to meet at 7 a.m. the next morning, Tuesday, at a local McDonalds and go from there.

It’s an hour and a half drive from home to Carolina Beach, so my morning started really early. We met around 7:30 a.m., drove to the beach, I jumped in her truck, and we drove out to their camping spot. I always take two machines, usually my PI (primary) and AT Pro (backup), glad I did this time. Sara-Kate put me on the spot, as she remembered it, and I started my search. Within the first three steps, I had collected a dozen tent stakes, which was wasting too much time digging them out. I went back to her truck and grabbed the AT Pro and started over. After searching where she thought she parked, I moved probably 100 yards further south and worked a back and forth grid search to my original starting point. The area I was searching is all camping spots, and the amount of trash people leave in the sand is amazing, and this is with trash cans every 15-20 feet. Anyway, after searching for almost 4 hours and cleaning the beach of trash, there was no ring. I was completely confident I had hit it hard and hadn’t missed the ring. Bless her heart, Sara-Kate was trying so hard not to show her disappointment, but I could see it in her face and hear it in her voice. When I can’t find something for somebody, I truly feel their pain. I knew she had pretty much given up hope of finding it because she was talking about filing an insurance claim on it.

As we’re driving off the beach, I don’t remember which one of us brought it up, but we decided to head to her friend’s house and give it a try. Following her in my car, we made the 20-25 minute drive and pulled into the driveway. My first impression was if her ring hadn’t been picked up in the parking lot of the gas station, it had to be here in the grass. Sara-Kate and her friend were trying to remember where the cars were parked in the driveway at the time of the loss. Meanwhile, I started doing a grid search about 6-7 feet left of the driveway working my way back towards the driveway. On the third pass, while I’m checking out a pretty good shallow target, I glanced over to my left, and there was her ring. Just sitting down in the grass, where it had been for the last two days. I picked it up and cupped in my hand, walking towards where Sara-Kate was standing talking to her friend’s husband. I was acting like I finished with trying to find her ring and looking disappointed. I said to her, “Well young lady, I don’t know what to tell you.” She responded, “You can tell me you found my ring,” as she’s jumping up and down like she’s excited. My response was, “OK” as I held up her ring holding it between my finger and thumb. It caught her totally off guard as she stared at her ring not fully grasping what I had said, then Bam, she stepped back, bent over at the waist, covered her face with her hands and said (loudly): “Oh, S#&T”!!!! Then the tears started flowing. The moment was priceless and is exactly why I love being a ring finder. It took Sara-Kate a few minutes for the shock and excitement to wear off, and the reality of having her ring back to set in. When it did, we jumped in our cars and drove to her house to give her fiancé, Danny the good news. Sara-Kate was so excited to tell Danny, she flew out of the truck and into the house, yelling over her shoulder to me “come on in.” When I got in the house, I got to meet the whole family. Her fiancé, Danny, their 5 year old son Wyatt James, who wanted me to go out in the back yard to play, and their precious little daughter, Lilly. Lilly actually let me hold her and gave me big grins. I’m pretty sure the whole family was feeling the excitement of Sara-Kate having her ring back. Danny was definitely happy and couldn’t believe we found it. He confided in me that he hated the thought of having ten more payments on the ring, but Sara-Kate didn’t have it. Well, now she does Danny!!! Nothing but smiles and hugs when I left. It doesn’t get too much better than this.

Sara-Kate and Danny – Thank you for trusting me to help find your treasure. Best of Luck to you two, you’re an awesome couple with a beautiful family.

Jim

I was contacted by Alexa this afternoon about her wedding band. She believed it was put into the trash of the hotel room that she and her girlfriends stayed at the night before her wedding. It had been picked out especially by her fiancé Anthony, and wrapped, so she would not see it until he placed it on her finger yesterday at their wedding. The wedding went on even though the ring was gone, She explained that all the trash from yesterday had been put into the dumpster, and would be taken away tomorrow. I knew what this meant, we would have to empty the dumpster to search the trash, which did not excite me, so I really bombarded her with a lot of questions hoping it could have been lost somewhere else. It looked as though it was the trash. I asked her to go out and take a picture of the dumpster, so I could see the amount of trash in it to ascertain the enormity of the job ahead. She sent 2 shots (there were 2 dumpsters) one of an overflowing dumpster, and the other of one 3/4 full. My heart dropped a bit. I told her I was on my way, and that we would do a thorough search.

When I got to the hotel Alexa and her new husband Anthony met me at the dumpsters. I had a little time with the staff before they arrived, and found that the black 33 gallon bags were from the restaurant, and white ones from the rooms. Each dumpster had about an equal amount of black and white bags, so this information halved the process ahead. We talked a bit more about the contents they expected to see, and it seemed that we would be able to narrow down the search more because of specific things they used for their respective parties. Both Alexa and Anthony had parties that Friday night at the hotel on separate floors, but had the same beverages, and other utensils. With this information, I figured we had to find the trash with those items before we searched more intensely. We started pulling bags out and checking contents, nothing. We got down about half way, and couldn’t reach the bags anymore, so I went into the dumpster. The other problem was that the bags were cheap, and the heavy ones from the restaurant were coming apart and dumping the contents back into the dumpster, LOTS of uneaten food that I now had to search through (we were wearing gloves thankfully). We did find the trash that came from Anthony’s room, but the ring was not in that bag.

We finished the overflowing dumpster, so I went to the 3/4 full one and jumped in. I began removing bags and putting them out on the ground with all the rest. Finally, down in the corner, on the bottom of the dumpster, I found the bag that came from Alexa’s room, and handed it to Anthony. He took it over to a large piece of plywood that we were using to dump the bag contents allowing me to pass my detector over, and shook it out. I grabbed my detector, and began searching the trash finding a lot of foil items, but no ring. Alexa did find the paper bag the ring had been in. Her ring was also in a small plastic bag and wrapped in paper so she could not see it before the wedding, but we could not find it amongst the trash. It was looking a bit grim for finding the ring, but Alexa asked if I would check once more with the detector, which I told her I would be happy to do. Anthony and I began moving some of the bags that were crowding the area, when all of a sudden he looked into the slot on the bottom of the dumpster that is used by the trash truck to lift it into the truck, and there sat the little package. How it got there is a complete unknown.

It was just awesome to be there when Alexa saw her ring for the first time, and to be present when Anthony placed it on her finger for the first time as husband and wife, with all the hotel employees surrounding them, standing in the trash we had removed from the dumpsters. A wedding story they will be able to revisit many times throughout their married years to come. What a great storybook ending. What a great day.

 

If you lose your ring or other metal item of value, call as soon as possible. I will work hard, using the most up to date metal detectors, to help you find what you thought might never be found again. I search, Beverly Hills, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, Northridge, Pasadena, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, Seal Beach, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Torrance, Venice Beach, and all parks, yards, gardens, and ponds (to 5 foot depths) in all of Orange County, all of Los Angeles County, and Ventura County.

 

Genevieve contacted me late yesterday afternoon asking if I could help in finding her wedding set (engagement ring and wedding band). I asked her a few questions, and she let me know that the loss had happened not too long before her call which encouraged me at the possibility of a recovery. I told her that I would leave immediately in order to not allow any more time to elapse, causing the recovery to be much harder. I then asked her to secure the area, so that it would not be disturbed any further, and I was on my way.

When I got to the beach, I met her husband Carlo who led me to where Genevieve was waiting. They had laid out towels to secure the area where they thought rings had been lost. We discussed what had happened, and then I began the search. After about 3 short passes I got a good signal, dug, and in the scoop was Genevieve’s wedding band. I held it up, and said #1, she was so excited, as was Carlo. I continued my search working out of the area we discussed when I received another good signal, looked down and could see a small part of the edge of the second ring. In went the scoop, and out came the engagement ring. Needless to say, there were two very happy people at the beach yesterday. They had totally given up hope before they called. The call to me was a last resort. I am so glad I was able to answer that call, and restore their joy. Great day!

 

If you lose your ring or other metal item of value, call as soon as possible. I will work hard, using the most up to date metal detectors, to help you find what you thought might never be found again. I search, Beverly Hills, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, Northridge, Pasadena, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, Seal Beach, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Torrance, Venice Beach, and all parks, yards, gardens, and ponds (to 5 foot depths) in all of Orange County, all of Los Angeles County, and Ventura County.

 

On April 10 2018 I was in class and got a call from Matt who just arrived today with his family and they are on vacation. He informs me that he lost his wedding ring while playing in the water with his beautiful daughter. I tell Matt to give me an Hour and a half because my detector is on the other side of the island.  In the meantime while I’m heading out to get my gear I called matt and asked him to pull up google maps and make me a map. I asked him to try and locate the spot where he believes the ring came off and draw a circle on the map to limit my search area. I asked if he could put me in the right area by narrowing my search site as it was 4:30pm and the sun was on its way down. Well, after much traffic I arrive and meet up with Matt. I get to the beach and gear up. After a few passes I get a great tone/reading. I look in my scoop and there it is Matts wedding. I turn to MATT who is looking on the shoreline and ask him ” What kind of wedding band?” Which I knew very well it’s his. He says “it’s a gold wedding band… did you find it?” I tell him to take a look in the scoop and the sheer JOY that came from his response “YES I CANT BELIVE IT!” was very comforting. As we were leaving BOTH very excited I asked MATT… So, what do you think your wife will say? He smiles and says she will be pleasantly surprised! Another recovery with a happy heart! Now you can enjoy the island and have a great vacation! Best wishes and GOD BLESS.