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A mix of sand, water and waves is notorious for making rings and jewelry vanish.

Last Saturday, Elmhurst, Illinois resident, Joe Reiff, saw his platinum wedding band leave his hand after he threw a Nerf football while standing knee deep in Lake Michigan. The ring tumbled out of sight into the churning shore waters. Despite his immediate rescue efforts and those of his friends, Dan’s marriage-token seemed destined to remain one with nature, forever hidden from the light of day.

After Joe contacted me, we arranged to meet at the beach a couple days later. The waves were unusually high. This added to the recovery challenge since gold and platinum tend to keep settling with the wave and sand movement. After an hour or so, I picked up a faint signal in the headset of my Minelab Excalibur detector. But the more I dug, the weaker the signal became as mounds of sand carried by the waves filled in the hole before I could get my scoop back in. If I was going to catch up with the target, it meant working faster. Sure enough, at the 20-inch marker on my scoop handle, the huge hole became quiet. This meant the object, whatever it was, had to be in my scoop. When I lifted it out of the waves and looked, there was Joe’s ring!

It is not often that our oceans and Great Lakes of North America give up their treasures. But this one was no match for technology and perseverance. Even after 40 plus years of metal detecting, it never ceases to amaze me that any rings are recovered. After all, a ring is a very small bit of metal and these bodies of water, immense!

Thanks, Joe, for giving me the opportunity to recover your ring. And thanks for your generous reward.

If someone you know has lost a ring, give me a call. You never know; even Lake Michigan gives up its treasures sometimes!

I have it on good authority that spinning a child on an inner tube in the water can be great fun, but fatal for wedding rings.

A family outing at the Mauthe Lake Recreation Area, near Kewaskum, WI ended on a terribly disappointing note when Germantown, WI, resident Dan Koslo’s tungsten and gold wedding band disappeared. It happened in the park’s swimming area while playing with his children. The sickening feeling in the pit of one’s stomach whenever this happens is one shared by an estimated 60% of married men who, I’ve learned, will lose their wedding rings at some time or another. That seems like an extreme statistic. But even if it’s only half true, it still amounts to a LOT of wedding rings! And that doesn’t include all the other kinds of rings that are lost.

When Dan reached out to me for help, it was first necessary to obtain permission from Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to use a metal detector in the State Park. DNR Ranger, Megan Sina, kindly assisted with getting a Metal Detector User Permit.

Heavy dark clouds were threatening to dump their rain when I arrived at the beachfront. Dan joined me shortly. I set up a grid pattern using homemade buoys and began systematically scanning the lake bottom in the vicinity of where the ring went missing. The presence of iron in spring-fed Mauthe Lake elicited a cacophony of chirps and barks from my Minelab Excalibur detector, but these were not the sounds I wanted to hear.

At last, a promising clean, bright signal in my headset invited further investigation. Raising my stainless-steel sand scoop up out of the water to the light of day revealed the desired target! A glad reunion commenced just as torrents of rain let loose. It was as though nature was joining us in the happy recovery, applauding it with deafening claps of rain on the lake’s surface. But I couldn’t help but notice a drop of another kind, one that glistened ever so discreetly in a corner of Dan’s eye.

I’ve observed this phenomenon before, pondering how an inanimate object can evoke such deep emotion. I believe the response has to do with memories, with experiences and associations with the object—a shared history. The capacity for such emotional attachment to the inanimate is just one more example of how humankind is uniquely set apart from the animal world. But that is another story.

Thanks Dan, for the privilege of searching for and returning your precious ring. May its story continue (on your hand) and become increasingly precious to you for many, many years to come!

If you, the reader, have lost a ring, don’t give up hope; it may still be right where it was dropped, or should I say, right where you may have spun your children or grandchildren on an inner tube in some lake. Even if your ring was lost many years ago, contact myself or another member of The Ring Finders. Who knows, yours could be the next smile on these happy blog pages!

TESTIMONY
Hello Paul! I want to thank you again for your quick response, experience and confidence in the recovery of my ring at Mauthe Lake! Within the first few minutes of our conversation on the phone I knew you were the person I needed! I am blessed to have found someone so passionate like you in what you do! I wish you could have seen my wife’s expression when i arrived home with my ring! To say you made one very happy bride again would be an understatement! Thank you so very much Paul! I will never forget! — Dan Koslo

Chris contacted me yesterday evening stating that he had removed his wedding ring to swim along the Crystal Coast.  He placed the ring in the pocket of a tent they had set up for the day.  While packing up to leave, the tent was shaken to remove the clinging sand.  It was just a short while later Chris noticed the ring had gone missing.  Just after getting Chris’s message I called and explained I would head that way very soon.  We arrived at the beach and the search began in the darkness.  It was only a few minutes and a constant tone rang up on my metal detector.  The ring was quickly returned!  I forgot to take a picture of Chris with his ring and requested a picture the next day which he quickly obliged.

Tag:  metal detector rental, lost beach ring, ring recovery

I forgot to post this last September, but it’s an aweseome recovery story!  I was called out by a married couple who needed some help searching a sand bar for her lost ring set.  It consisted of three beautiful 14k rings from their engagement, wedding, and anniversary with many sparkly diamonds, and it was her pride and joy, in addition to their four wonderful children.  She was throwing a football in the water with some friends and noticed it gone.  She never  thought it would be recovered until they googled Ringfinders.  She, her husband, and  I searched for the better part of a day with no luck.   Then, I went out on my own for a full day, again with no  luck.  I ventured out a third time with my two friends,  Jeff and Brian, thinking three experienced detectorists would have better results.  I found the signal right about where she had searched with me the first time, and quickly texted a pic to her husband.  He drove to pick it up and bought the three of us some hot hamburgers and cold beer.    It was great to see his smile!  He didn’t tell his wife it had been found, but just laid it on the kitchen counter and snapped her picture when she saw it.   Nice of him to share it!   The Ringfinders make a lot of couples very happy to recover their treasured memories.  It’s more than just finding rings.