Council Bluffs Tag | The Ring Finders

My daughter received a text one evening from her High School drama teacher, he had lost his wedding ring and was looking for anyone with a metal detector.  My daughter then turned to me and asked me if I would help him.  Of course I said yes, because that is what we do.  She replied back and arrangements were made for another student to come by at 6 am the next morning to lead me to Mr. M’s.

They were in the middle of building a new set for the next production at the high school so he only had until 7am before he had to be at the school for the kids.  I figured we would have enough time for him to show me the area he may have lost it.   It was still dark when we arrived, enough time to have a cup of coffee and get a little background information of what happened.  Turns out he was doing some clean-up in his garden when he noticed it was gone.

First light we went out to the yard, he lost it while pulling old plants and walking them a couple hundred feet to a dumpster.  He and his wife were up until 2 am with flashlights digging thru the dumpster and searching the yard looking for it.  It was when he walked to the middle of the yard and said I pulled the tomato plants and shook the dirt off of them here when I realized that would be my starting point.

I gave my pin-pointer to them to probe the flower garden, put my headphones on, and powered up.  I took 5 steps and had my first signal, used my detectors pin pointer looked down and I could see his ring.  When I looked over to them they all had their back’s turned towards me.  I said, “Hey Mr M.”   He turned around with a puzzled look on his face and walked over.  I looked down and said what’s that.  He looked down and didn’t see anything.  I moved my foot so my toe was pointing to it and said right there.   A grin came across his face when he quickly reached down and snatched up his ring!

 

In late June, I responded to a Craigslist offering my assistance in locating a ring lost in a local park.  I received a response stating that they had already searched the area with a metal detector with no luck other than the usual trash and a little bit of change.   I had never given much thought to hunting that park, because a few years ago much of it was ripped up and completely redone.  I put this one off in the back of my mind.

Until this weekend, every time I drove by that newly remodeled park this summer I noticed that there was quite a bit of activity as of late.  I decided to have a look around, Saturday I found some loose change and a little silver ring.  My wife was with me this trip and I managed to put off her boredom for a little over an hour.

Sunday afternoon I had a chance to get away to take another look.  After about 2 hours, with nothing much to show but a little change, I received a signal that had a rather low id (normally trash) but it was a good solid signal.  I took my pin-pointer out and waved it over the spot and received a solid tone (metal close to the surface.)

I pulled the grass back and immediately recognized that glimmer as a white gold ring……I thought to myself, what would the odds be of someone else losing a ring in that same area.  Shortly after getting home, I pulled up that email I had saved months earlier and replied to it asking for a description of the ring that was lost.  From the description I received it was pretty obvious…..we had a match.

Tonight I met and returned the ring to Brittney and found that it was lost while putting lotion on a little one while at an outdoor concert.   She thought it was gone forever….