Diamond Wedding Band Lost at Manhattan Beach, CA…Found and Joyously Returned!
I was on the road last night about 9:20 PM when I received a call from Chelsey. She had lost her wedding band at the beach earlier in the day. She had gone surfing, and wisely took her ring off and left it in her beach bag. When she and her family were getting ready to leave she noticed that another piece of her jewelry had fallen from the bag. She then picked up her towel, and shook the sand from it, the ring was gone. I wasn’t far from the beach, and told her I could be there in 20 minutes, she needed more time, as she was at dinner with her family, so we arranged to meet at 10:15 PM at the beach.
I was waiting as Chelsey and her family rolled up. There was about 7 of them, and we all made our way down to the spot of the loss. Well it was dark now, which made it harder to judge landmarks, so we had to widen the search area. The other problem was that the tide was super high, and as I searched the water would come up and wipe out my grid lines, so I had to pay close attention to where I had already searched in order to cover the area correctly. Chelsey and her family also brought along lights, sifters and colanders to continue the search they had begun earlier. The humor entered into it for me as I looked around, yet I did not say anything until the ring was found, that it looked like a Paleontology convention as everyone was spread around on the sand with their lights and sifters delicately searching for Chelsey’s ring.
I searched for about an hour, moving further out, and closer to the water than they had told me, and could see at times that there was concern that I should be staying in the area they felt sure of, and I understand that feeling. I have been doing this long enough though to know that sometimes the ring isn’t always where the person thinks it is, so I usually persist, and work out of the box, or color outside of the lines so to speak. Well I decided to work much closer to the edge of the slope down to the water when I got a real good signal in the head phones. I dug, and in the scoop was Chelsey’s ring; 11:30 PM. I lifted it up, and was immediately stormed by the entire family, who lined up to give me a hug. WHAT GREAT JOY RESTORED! What a great opportunity to be a help; love it!
If you lose your ring or other metal item of value, call as soon as possible. I will work hard, using the most up to date metal detectors, to help you find what you thought might never be found again. I search, Beverly Hills, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, Northridge, Pasadena, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, Seal Beach, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Torrance, Venice Beach, and all parks, yards, gardens, and ponds (to 5 foot depths) in all of Orange County, all of Los Angeles County, and Ventura County.
Jared wrote, “Hello! I wanted to reach out to let you guys know how grateful I am for Mike McInroe! What a blessing he is. Our lost ring story begins 33 years ago when my mother was pregnant with me. Due to the swelling she wasn’t able to wear her wedding ring anymore and being from the poor midwest, she felt awful not having her ring on and being pregnant. Despite their financial situation my father came home one day with a new, larger ring so she would have something to wear while she was pregnant. It wasn’t much but it meant the world to my mother! She decided while she was pregnant with me that one day she would give it to me or my spouse to wear when we were expecting our own. 33 years later, that day finally came. While she was visiting us for our baby shower in Orlando from the cold of Minnesota she brought the ring to give to my wife and to share that story with her. Heartbreakingly she never got the chance. The day she decided to give it to my wife we were all fishing off our dock in the canal. My mother was wearing the ring on her pinky finger and when she went to cast the rod–she dropped her precious ring of 33 years into the muddy water. Needless to say my mother was heartbroken– as was I for her! I searched in the water for an hour or two, to no avail, bringing up bucket after bucket of mud in a hopeless search. Meanwhile my wife was laughing at me–having no idea why in the world I would be in the water and having no idea about the ring or the family story. We did not find the ring and my mother flew home to Minnesota heart broken. (A few weeks later she bought and mailed us a ring that looked similar, feeling it was all she could do.) I was determined to find that ring! In my search to figure out how to build a pump and dredge system to dredge and sift the mud, I found theringfinders.com while searching for “How to find a ring underwater.” I emailed Mike on a Friday morning and by that evening we had a time set for the following day. The next morning I explained to Mike how the ring had been lost 4 weeks prior and showed him the dock and where we thought it might be. He said a little prayer as he climbed down the ladder into the canal and began his search. About 20 minutes later we heard the wonderful buzzing of his metal detector, picking up a strong signal. A couple of muddy scoops later and with a huge grin on his face, he pulled the ring out of his muddy sifter. Mike was an amazing spirit and a blessing to come and find our lost ring. We had our baby just a few short days after finding the ring and I can’t wait to surprise my mother when she comes down to meet the baby and to find out we found her ring–the ring she had been holding for 33 years!
