Nexklace Vanished Into Beach Sand, Spray Beach LBI, recovered by Edward Trapper, NJ Ring Finder
Brandy called asking if I would be able to come to the beach and help her and her daughter find a necklace she had lost earlier that day. Since I wouldn’t be able to get there until well after dark, I asked if she knew exactly where it had been lost. She assured me they had marked the entire area with sticks and were confident it had fallen out of a pocket inside her beach bag.
After a long day, I finally arrived at the beach that evening. I had called Brandy with my ETA, and it worked out perfectly that she was able to meet me there. As we walked out to the search area, I was impressed with how well they had marked the location. Even in the dark, it was easy to identify exactly where to begin.
Brandy explained that she had taken her necklace off, placed it inside a pocket of her beach bag, and sometime later it must have slipped out into the sand without anyone noticing.
We marked out a search area of about 20 by 20 feet and I began a slow, methodical grid search. Because it was such a fine necklace, I had my detector’s sensitivity turned up very high so I could hear even the faintest signals. Partway through the search I got a very weak signal and was convinced I had found the necklace. Instead, it turned out to be the metal tip from a makeup brush.
After searching the entire grid without success, I decided to change my approach and perform a cross-grid search from a different direction. As I passed back over the same area where I had found the makeup brush tip, I heard another very faint signal. This time, after carefully scooping the sand, there it was—Brandy’s beautiful necklace.
Brandy and her daughter were absolutely amazed. We had already covered the area once, and they were beginning to lose hope. Fortunately, patience, experience, and searching from a different direction made all the difference.
It’s a great reminder that sometimes the first search isn’t enough. Never give up.
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.
