Lubna was a bit embarrassed when she rang me as she had thrown her engagement ring into the neighbour’s garden which was heavily overgrown with weeds and bushes. Of course she regretted it straight away but even after clearing away most of the weeds her family could not find it.
It is winter, here, and as soon as I arrived at the property it started to rain and I only had a short time before it would be dark. The area to be searched was very small but with so much foliage and rubbish I resorted to getting down on my hands and knees with my handheld pinpointer.
An hour later, with a pouch full of rubbish, I had finished the most probable area without success and had to extend the boundary.
A couple more bits of rubbish and then while pointing at the base of a small tree yet another signal. As I cleared away the debris Lubna’s beautiful white gold and diamond encrusted ring finally revealed itself.
It looks like it has bounced sideways off one of the trees and then slipped down to the bottom of another tree.
Sorry for the bad photo but it was dark by the time I took this
The smile says it all.
This was after I cleared away the weeds and rubbish
We received a call from a wonderful lady named Sandy, she said she had a desperate situation. I said OK, tell me what happened. With tears in her voice she said she lost a family heirloom, a 6 carat diamond ring, explaining how every diamond represented each member of her family who had passed away in her life time.
Sandy said that she had come home from work and gone into her kitchen. She always takes off her ring to fix dinner and always puts it in the exact same place. The ring slipped out of her hand and bounced once on the counter and disappeared. She had searched for 2 days but could not find the ring. She had removed everything from the counters, nearby shelving and checked under everything with no luck in locating her ring. I smiled to myself as she was telling me her story because it sounded just like a situation we had a few years ago of a man who loss his wedding band in his apartment bathroom. We made arrangements to come out in 2 days when her schedule would permit her to be there with us. (Note: Always have the client there when you initially search, many times the stories change when you arrive on site).
My wife Ellen, my son Tripp and I, all three went to Sandy’s home around 5:30pm; Sandy met us a the door and was so nice. I knew that our detectors would not work in her kitchen, so we only took in our pinpointers and inspection camera. Sandy described and went through the motions of reenacting what had happened with her ring. The whole time she was talking I was assembling my inspection camera. I began looking under and behind all the appliances and at first thought I saw it under the refrigerator but that was not it.
Then I laid on the floor and looked up under the kick plate of the kitchen cabinets and once again found a small gap of about 1/2 inch up under the cabinets. Understand this was not a large kitchen so we knew the item still had to be close. I used our inspection camera to run the 36″ camera line up inside the baseplate of the kick plate under the cabinets. The angle was very difficult to get the camera line into and tough to move around but in about 10 minutes we discovered the ring. I did not say anything but just winked at my son and my wife.
My son and I then went about trying to retrieve the ring as it was way back inside the underneath portion of the these cabinets. After using the tip of the camera and a coat hanger we began inch by inch to move the ring closer to the front of the cabinets, being only able get about 2 inches of our fingers inside gap. At this point the customer still did not know we had found the ring. While discussing techniques to retrieve the ring she heard us talking and we then confirmed with her what we found on our camera. She had to bend over and look at the screen but when she did she squealed, “that’s it, that’s it”, and began to cry. When she calmed enough to take a breath she started saying to her husband “they found it, they found it”. My wife had to console her while my son and I worked to pull out the ring. We could have had pulled off the baseboards but they had been painted over so many times and were so old we knew they would have broken. So we continued the slow way. Soon my son was able to get a coat hanger over the ring and then hook it enough to pull the ring up, remember this is being done laying on our backs looking at a 3″ screen on our inspection camera.
My son handed Sandy her 6 carat family ring (estimated $30,000), she was beyond happy, she hugged all of us many times and could not thank us enough. It was so much fun seeing her reaction and to know we helped put a smile back on her face and in her heart.
On Sunday afternoon we got a call from a gentleman who had lost his wedding ring. He had been working all day in his yard digging a trench to relieve some standing water. After completing the several hour project he realized his wedding ring was gone. He and his family search for 2 hours and had no luck. He found “The Ring Finders” website and gave us a call. We spent about 20 minutes covering the area which was crazy with signals due to a power line running under his backyard. I decided to re-check the trench with full descrimination, looking only for gold. I got a hit near the end of the 15ft trench about 6 inches down. As I bent down and used my pinpointer through the mud and water in the trench I saw a glint of GOLD in the hole. The wedding ring was stuck in the wall of the trench about 4-6 inches down. I turn and ask the homeowner, I said, “I have a questions for you” “would you like to have this back and I handed him his ring“.
He and his wife were so excited they could not believe we found it… they kept saying “you guys are good, you guys are so good“. The wife came out and gave us hug… it was another successful hunt for the “Dallas Ring Finders”.
I received a call yesterday from Eric a resident of Bellaire, Texas regarding his lost wedding ring. Eric reported he had lost his wedding ring in his backyard while playing water volleyball in his new pool. Eric said he remembered hitting a volleyball and his ring flying off his finger. Eric reported he searched his yard for several days trying to find his ring. Eric said after unsuccessfully finding his ring he located “The Ring Finders” on a Google a search.
I made the trip out to Eric’s home this morning and was given a walk through of how and where the ring was lost. The backyard was under renovations, a beautiful new pool, landscaping steps, and new and old landscaping underway. The backyard had little grass, so the remaining search area was going to be several areas of monkey grass, small hedges and a few flower beds.
Having the 6″ coil for the CTX3030 was a big factor in this recovery. Most of my work was pushing the small coil through the small tight hedges to work the ground below and around the hedges. It would have been nearly impossible to have accomplished this task with the stock 11′ coil.
I worked an area of the yard that seemed most probable for Eric’s ring to have landed based on the information of how it was lost. This area was relatively heavy with scrubs and money grass providing a great hiding place for a missing ring.. I thought for sure it would be the spot. After spending sometime working the hedges and monkey grass in this area with no results, I moved to the far side of the yard.
I started in on one of the flower beds, pushing the coil through the hedges blindly when I got a nice signal. I worked through the ground cover vegetation with a pin pointer and uncovered a series of intertwined gold loops. I ‘ll be honest, I initially thought maybe I had found an earring , I was thinking to myself what the heck is it. I knew it was gold, but did not register as a gold wedding band.
I hollered over to Eric who was working in the yard, and held out the dangling loops of gold, I saw a smile on his face, and rest is now history.
Eric explained that the odd configuration (the gold loops) was a Gold Arabic Puzzle Ring, and it had belonged to his grandfather original, passed to his father, and now to him. Thought to myself (priceless) and awesome, that is something you could never replace.
I have picked up a lot of rings, but this was my first ever puzzle ring and what a cool story. It didn’t take long to figure out why they call it a puzzle ring.
The video is a quick clip of Eric putting his ring back together.
Andrea and Travis were making a video and re-enacting a scene from The Lord of the Rings movie. Andrea finds her “Precious” ring on a log and then tosses it to one side. It was meant to land on a bank with almost no grass where it would be easy to see, however it landed short where the grass was a bit longer and they were unable to find it.
Andrea’s Ring
I thought this was going to be an easy, quick find as it was a very small area to search. I ran my CTX3030 over the area but couldn’t get a signal that remotely resembled a gold ring. I extended the search by quite a distance and we even reviewed the video to get an idea of where it may have gone. I then got Andrea to re-enact the throw with one of my test rings. Each time it landed in a similar area so I had another sweep.
Over a clump of grass I got a very weak signal that looked more like trash than a ring but I checked it out with my pinpointer. It was indicating something in the middle of the grass but it wasn’t until the pinpointer actually touched the ring that I could see it. It was sitting vertically on its edge right at the bottom of the grass.
Andrea’s ring safely on her finger
No one could believe that they hadn’t found it when the were looking for it but they all agreed that we probably wouldn’t have found it without the detector. Hugs and smiles all round.
Now, Andrea was a bit embarrassed by all this but when they showed me the video it looked pretty cool, and this will certainly add to the story.
They also gave me a generous reward for which I very grateful.
We received a call from Christine about 3pm on Sunday afternoon. She got our name and number from a friend she had told that she had lost her wedding set of 3 rings.
Christine lives on about a acre of land, she had gone out to the back of the property to help her husband bag up some leaves that he had been raking together. They worked together for about a hour and finished up and carried the bags of leaves up to the garage about a half acre away. That was when she realized that her Wedding Set (3 rings) was missing. In a panic, she and her husband looked all over the yard, they dumped the leaf bags out but did not see anything. They spent several hours looking with no luck. Later in the day while talking with her friend, she told her about the lost rings. Her friend said, wait a minute I heard about this website of people who find rings. She Googled and found “The Ring Finders” website and called Christine back and gave her our number.
It was about 3pm when Christine called and she lived 41 miles from us. I told her we would be there in about and hour & a half. We needed to hurry as I was concerned it would get dark and it was already quite cold, and the darkness would only make it colder. We arrived and got our 2 Garrett AT Pros and Pinpointers out then Christine walked us to the back of the acre of property. She showed us all the places she walked and was helping her husband with the leaves. Ellen and I chatted about what area we would grid off visually and began to detect. Within 10 minutes I hear Ellen say “Here’s One”, I joined her as we looked through about 4-6 inches of leaves in a pile but nothing else rang up on the detectors. I told Ellen to keep looking and I ask Christine to show me the bags of leaves, my thinking was that if one ring was in the pile of leaves that they had been bagging then it was likely the other rings would be in the bags of leaves near the garage. I began to scan the full plastic bags of leaves with my detector and got 3 very light hits. I kept scanning but nothing else hit so I backed up to the bag with something metal inside. I tore a small hole in the bag and began to stick my Pinpointer into the bag. As I got a signal, I used my hand to begin pulling out whatever the metal was. 1st hit was piece of wire, the second was a metal screw and the 3rd hit I could not see it. Finally I saw a glint of Gold in the bag. I began to smile but had to fight the leaves to find it, and finally the smallest of the 3 rings rings was found. Christine was standing right beside me and could not believe I found it. Now the only ring missing was the most expensive, the diamond solitaire with several small diamonds around the band. After determining that nothing else was in the 4-5 bags of leaves, I walked back to the rear of the property and told Ellen that I had found one but that one was still missing. She had been working out visual grid and I went back and started back over the grid working the opposite direction. I made several passes checking every 2inch or less hit that I got regardless of the type of signal. Then I got a shaky 44-46 hit that was very weak, as I was checking everything I almost kept going but thank goodness I did not. I reached down and moved the leaves and grass and there it was, the diamond solitaire twinkled at me. I reached down and picked it up and ask Christine, “Would this make you Happy!” She and her husband were so excited and grateful. It is so much fun to see the reaction of our customers when we are successful.
So 3 rings, 1 in the leaf pile, 1 in a trash bag a 1/2 acre away and one in the grass 5-6 feet away from the 1st one.
On December 29, 2013 Ryan Law was out playing with his dogs at a school football field that was near his house. During this play session his beloved custom made white gold wedding band had gone missing. The ring is a tad large and had become even looser by the cool temperatures that afternoon. Ryan spent the rest of the afternoon searching for his ring with no success. He called me that evening and we arranged for me to come and search for his ring on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve.
I arrived for my search and Ryan and I went over the events of the rings loss and he showed me the areas that he and his dogs were in that day. I began my grid search of the area closed to the gate that we came through to get into the sports field. For being the last day of the year of the year the weather was unusually warm but after just over 2 hours of searching I had not recovered Ryan’s ring. Ryan needed to go to work so I told him I would be back the following day to continue the search.
New Year’s Day morning we were receiving a rain/snow mix so my search had to wait till afternoon. I drove to the school grounds and started my search of the area that had yet to be searched. After an hour and a half or so the ring was recovered by eyeballing it on the cinder running track that surrounded the football field. I called Ryan to let him know I had the ring but he was out of town. Just as I got to my car to put my gear away the snow started to come down, good timing.
Ryan ended up coming to my house that evening to claim his ring. He and his wife were quite happy to get his ring back.
This is another long distance find. Portia called me and said her husband Chris probably lost his wedding ring at a beach resort in La Jolla. The location was on private property so they had to arrange for me to do a search there. They were visiting from Colorado and had already returned home when they contacted me so they couldn’t show me the location in person but they were able to e-mail me a map with the likely area noted. So with my trusty “treasure” map and a contact name at the resort, I headed down the the beach with my E-trac. After meeting the resort person and telling him my plan, I headed over to the search area and started a grid pattern. Since I was searching for a stainless ring, I didn’t leave anything to chance on signals…..and there were a ton of them! I dug everything that made a repeatable sound. Seems nobody has detected that area for quite some time as there were target everywhere! After about an hour or so, moving a few beach chairs, and over 40 targets, I got another one that didn’t fit any common target I.D. Success! It matched the description so my day was done. I gave them the fun call and made arrangements to mail the ring to them. It’s up to the USPS to finish the reunion now! Thanks for calling me and hopefully when you vistit here again, we’ll get a chance to meet.
24kt. Wedding Ring Recovered in Sugar Land 11/05/2013
I received a call from Chetham, regarding his wife’s lost 24kt Gold Wedding Ring at a park in Sugar Land, Texas. Chetham reported he and his wife Nethra were at a gathering with friends when she lost her ring.
Chetham said he and his wife where sitting at one of the picnic tables in the park when her ring accidentally flew off of her finger and landed in the grass near the picnic table.
Chetham reported he and several friends searched for an hour or better on their hands and knee digging through the grass trying to find the ring.
Chetham said after unsuccessfully locating the ring he did a Google search and located the web site www.theringfinders.com.
I met Chatham and Nethra at the park today and we searched the area they felt the missing ring would be found. We searched and searched the area in question with no success. I had Nethra perform a re-enactment of where she was standing and what she was doing when the ring came off her finger.
The ring was located 180 degrees in the opposite direction of where they believed the ring would be found.
You can see from the pictures both Chatham and Nethra were very happen when their missing ring was found.
