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A not so happy Christmas was shaping up for Brisbane, CA resident Lester and his wife. While on their way home, in the back seat of their son’s Mercedes on Christmas Eve, Sara asked to see her husband’s wedding band. It was late, dark and cold when they reached their son’s home, when Lester asked about his ring as they were walking to the front door.  No ring!

They went outside early on Christmas morning to search in the grass, around the driveway, on the sidewalk and in the street, but still no ring.

Two days later Lester  decided to rent a metal detector, and was searching online when he found me under Metal Detecting on Craig’s List. He explained that his wife thought she dropped his ring in the car but they had thoroughly searched the rear floor area 4 times. Being a new vehicle, it was pretty clean inside. So they thought the ring must have dropped outside the car while they were exiting. They wanted me to metal detect the dry, short grass, next to their driveway. (And also the sidewalk and street, haha.)

This is where deductive reasoning came into play. It was very easy to visually see that the ring was not on the dry grass next to the driveway, nor on the sidewalk or in the street. They had carefully searched those areas the first thing the next morning. Sara remembered that she had dropped the ring in the car, and that they had decided to wait and search the car in the light of the morning. I quickly deduced that the ring must somehow still be in the new Mercedes.

On my knees, with a strong flashlight, I again searched the driver’s side rear passenger floorboard, front seat rails, small floor heating vent and mechanical front seat wiring. No ring. Undaunted in my conviction that the ring must still be in the car, I shined my flashlight down the rear seat belt hole in the seat and Eureka, there is was, sitting on a little shelf, just under the seat. As soon as I nudged it, it fell further down, on to the metal chassis deck, and out of sight.

But at least we knew where it was! After tearing out the rear trunk liner to find no access, I was finally able to pry up the rear bench seat just enough to get my hand down and grab the ring!

My hero Sherlock Holmes would have been very pleased. This is a great reminder that there is always a logical explanation for getting to the bottom of a mystery and it pays to have faith in your reasoning. Metal detecting had nothing to do with this solution. In this set of circumstances, it was just old fashioned logic that led to another closed case for The Ringfinders! Its what we do.

Lester, who works for Grainger Supply, had recently lost a little weight, thus the tape on his beautiful gold wedding band. His cool demeanor belies his intense underlying inner joy about the recovery!

Cheers and best holiday wishes to all the members of our Ringfinders Team out there.

Never give up!

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SF Bay Area RingFinders Contact: Marshall Smith – Text or call: 415-895-0334

Metal Detectorist serving the Greater San Francisco Bay Area from sunny San Mateo, CA