Wedding ring Lost on the Beach, Harvey Cedars NJ, LBI, recovered by Edward Trapper, NJ Ring Finder
Faith messaged me asking if I could come out and help recover her father Mark’s ring, which had somehow disappeared into the sand. After getting a few details, I told them I’d head right over. In the meantime, I asked them to keep the area secure so no one would set up chairs where they had been sitting.
When I arrived on the beach, Mark walked me through exactly what happened. He had taken his ring off and placed it in the top pocket of his shirt, which he had laid on top of the cooler for safekeeping. After a few hours of enjoying the beach and doing a little swimming, he put his shirt back on and started to take a walk. As he was walking, he reached for the pocket and realized the ring was gone.
We searched the immediate area around the chairs first, but had no luck. Then I had Mark retrace the path he believed he had taken toward the lifeguard chair. Still nothing. I searched all the way up to the tide line and even worked a little into the waves, but the ring still didn’t turn up.
We regrouped and went over every detail again, but nothing changed. So I decided to work a little farther down the slope into the water, about knee-deep. Sure enough, just a few steps from his chair and in the same direction he had walked, I got the hit. Mark’s ring was already about 10 inches down in the soft sand.
A little recovery work and a little detective work saved the day on this one.
Melissa sent me a message in a bit of a panic—her husband Ed had just lost his wedding ring on the beach and she wanted to know if I was available to help. They were sitting right there when he realized the ring was gone. One moment he had it, and the next, it had vanished into the sand. I reassured them to stay put, letting them know I could be there in about half an hour. When I arrived, I quickly marked off the perimeter around where they had been sitting and got to work. In less than five minutes, I heard the satisfying clink of metal in my scoop. The ring was safely recovered, much to their relief. Another fantastic recovery on the Jersey Shore !!
I was at a family picnic when I received a call from Anthony, stating that he had just lost his beautiful cross on the beach, somewhere in the area they were sitting. It was early afternoon and I told him I would be able to swing by soon, and to secure the area so nobody else came and setup their beach things in the exact same spot. Anthony assured me that was not a problem because they were there for the entire day, plus the fact he was very anxious to get his cross back where it belonged around his neck. We spoke about the events leading up to the mishap, that’s when he told me about the big creator he and his friends had dug that day in the sand where they were sitting. He said they had all been digging around looking for the cross for quite a while, but were positive it must be there somewhere, because he had spent the best part of the morning there, digging. It was then I asked them to please stop digging otherwise the cross may get buried to deep for my machine to pick it up. When I arrived I could see the creator from the dune walkover, and it was pretty big. Sure enough, it was close to 4′ deep, and roughly 6′ in circumference. I hopped in, scanned the entire bottom and the walls, without even a squeak of a sound from my metal detector. Next, I scanned the piles of sand they had pulled out of the hole with no luck either. I asked them to pull the piles down lower, to an average of no more than 10″ higher than the regular beach level. Once again, no luck anywhere, so only one more place to look was the bottom, after they pulled about 10″ of sand out. Now, with all the sand moving, I assured that the cross was positively NOT in, or anywhere around the crater. So, back to the drawing board, where he mentioned they were tossing a football on the tide line earlier, and that his friend did tackle him there. I told him I really wish he mentioned that earlier, as the tide had been rising very quickly. Once he showed me the area, the cross was in my scoop within 2 minutes. If Anthony told me that one detail of the day, my search would have started there, and all the sand moving could have been eliminated. Lost of detective work is needed to rescue items from their hiding places.
