About 8 p.m. on Sunday, Aug 6th, I got a text with a picture from Ariel. The text said, “My daughter lost this ring today, in the ocean right in front of 53rd N Myrtle Beach. She also lost her wedding ring which goes with this but she is more concerned with the engagement ring.” I didn’t see the text until about 3 hours later, and responded asking what time and how deep she was. Ariel responded back saying, “It was high tide, around 12:30-1:00 pm. She was waist deep. There is a walk through at 53rd street and we were to the right about 100 feet.” I did a quick check of the tide tables and saw the next low tide was around 6:30 am Monday. I texted Ariel asking if there was a chance that someone could meet me in the morning around 7 am to show me the area. She responded “Absolutely, see you at 7.”
I got there a little early Monday morning and texted Ariel that I was there. I then marked off about a 100 feet and started an east/west grid search. Shortly after that Ariel, her husband Dan, and her daughter Hailey and her husband Justin showed up. I learned the wedding band and engagement were White Gold. This told me I was looking for a low number on the Equinox 800. Combined, they had done everything right. They had used a stationary landmark higher on the beach to mark where Hailey had lost her rings. I repositioned myself another 30 plus feet down the beach and started another grid search. Not too long after that, I got an iffy signal that would occasionally hit a 5. Ok, that’s what I was looking for. I dug a couple of scoops and got the target out of the sand. Earlier, Hailey had explained what the wedding band looked like. After spreading the sand out with my hands, I saw Hailey’s wedding band. They had moved down the beach and came running when I held Hailey’s ring up in the air and called her name. One ring found with one to go. I searched in a 10X10 foot square in and around the hole I dug to find the wedding band with negative results. My thinking was if both rings came off together, then both rings should be within a foot of each other. By now I was losing the tide, so I called Matt Fry, TRF Myrtle Beach and asked if he’d like to help later that afternoon. He didn’t hesitate to lend a hand.
Matt and I both showed up about 5 pm that afternoon ready to find the engagement ring. We split the area in half, he went north and I went south. We’d been out there a while, when a couple of buddies, who were out metal detecting the beach, stopped and joined in on the search. Now there were 4 guys with 3 different metal detectors searching from above the high tide line out to about knee deep and from north to south. We were grid searching, overlapping, and basically searching the entire beach for more than an hour with absolutely no luck. Again, the tide had changed so we called it a night. The 4 of us stood out there trying to figure out what could have happened to the approximate size 3 engagement ring with a pretty good size diamond on it.
I had a hard time letting this one go, so I text Ariel telling her that I wanted to try a different machine, my White’s PI and look again Tuesday evening at around 7 pm. I had another ring search pop up that I thought I could find quickly and still be at Hailey’s spot to search. Things don’t always work out as planned so I rescheduled Hailey’s search for 7 am on Wednesday. Wednesday morning I got there and got the area confused. I grid searched south of the area which worked out because the currents on Sunday, the day of the loss, were running to the south. Ariel showed up just as I was finished and showed me the right area. So I made another trip out with the PI on Wednesday evening and did another grid search and still wasn’t able to find the engagement ring. I just don’t have an answer as to what may have happened to Hailey’s engagement ring.
Hailey – I’m really sorry I couldn’t get both rings back to you but thank you for trusting me to try.
Jim
