Lost Gold Wedding Band Honeymoon Island, Florida…Found!!!
Steve Thomas
Dunedin Ring Finder lostringdunedin.com
“It’s only lost until I find it!”
Lost a ring or other metal valuable at the beach or in a grassy or sandy area? Jewelry slip off of you while working outside, playing with the dog or swimming? Please contact me ASAP at (843) 995-4719 or @dunedinringfinder. I offer a FREE metal detecting service, reward optional but appreciated upon recovery!
My wife and I recently were in Texas for about six weeks for the birth of our second grandson. I received several messages from individuals who had lost jewelry in the water at Honeymoon Island. Because I knew I would not be returning for several more weeks, I needed to call upon some experienced, trustworthy detectorists to conduct searches for these lost items as soon as possible and before they were found by someone who would not return them.
Jim contacted me to say that he had lost his white and yellow gold wedding band in shallow water at Pet Beach, Honeymoon Island State Park. Jim and his wife BJ were enjoying the day and the water but Jim had slipped on the rocks and shells in calf deep water and had fallen to his hands, losing his ring in the process. Because I was still in Texas, I messaged the Pinellas County Florida Ring Recovery group and over the course of the next few days several detectorists (Scott, Brenda, and Jason) searched for the ring. Jim had met Scott on site and showed him where he thought he lost the ring but the ring could not be found. Because Jim was so certain of where he had lost the ring, we all assumed that the ring had been found by another detectorist.
I returned from Texas a few days later and Jim reached out to me and asked if I could meet him at the beach for one last search. I agreed and arrived at the loss location about twenty minutes before he did. I turned on my Minelab Equinox 900 and began a grid search of the wet sand walking north and after a few minutes hit a target that I thought was in the rusty beer cap range. As I began to dig, some curious beach goers came up to see what I was doing. With my second scoop out popped Jim’s ring! I was shocked that it was still there after several weeks although it was a little further north and a little closer to shore than I thought it would be. The beach goers were very excited after I told them the story and they agreed to sit quietly and watch me surprise Jim when he arrived. Jim walked up to me a few minutes later and after introductions I asked him to point out to me where he thought he had lost his ring. Jim pointed in the general direction of the hole I had just pulled the ring from! I took Jim’s ring out of my pocket and asked him if this is what it looked like. Jim was initially speechless and the beach goers burst into applause.
Thanks to my fellow detectorists from Pinellas County Florida Ring Recovery for assisting with the search. And thanks to Jim for the generous reward and for trusting the Dunedin Ring Finder to find your ring. I was so blessed to have found it!
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.
Eileen called just as I had gotten out of the dentists office, wondering if it would be possible to come and search for her I-Phone that slid off the roof of a car, and landed somewhere alongside the roadway. She explained that she had put the phone on the roof of the car, and said goodbye to her company. Forgetting the phone was on the roof she went inside, and her company drove off. The following day she realized the phone was missing, and realized what had happened. She contacted her friend hoping he had picked it up prior to leaving the night before, which wasn’t the case. They had finally decided it must have slid off the car roof and landed somewhere on the side of the road. Using the find my phone app. they found the last known location of the phone before it died, where they searched for 4 days without any luck. That was when she decided to call in a professional recovery expert. We made arrangements to meet on the side of the roadway that afternoon. It was there Eileen went into more detail about HOW important this phone was, as nothing was backed up to the cloud, including over 6000 pictures, that were absolutely unreplaceable. This area was right in front of a big housing complex, that had manicured grounds with fences and pristine walking paths. I was praying it didn’t fall off there as the grass cutters had recently cut the lawn, and it would have shredded it to bits, had they ran it over. I instructed Eileen to go into the management office, explain what happened, and ask if possibly the phone was turned in. While she was in doing that I covered the entire area on both sides of the road, and all the landscape, with no luck, just as I had figured. Standing back, looking in the opposite direction, the curve in the road looked ever so inviting of an area, for a phone to slide off the roof. I walked back covering everything from the road in about 10′ with no luck. Then I turned around and continued back along the tall weeds, and wood line. Right along the weeds, just inside of where the mowers cut, I received the loudest broken signal from my metal detector, that I know ever to familiar, would be her cell phone. Sure enough BINGO!!!! I had her phone. I decided to record the moment when I returned her it, and needless to say, what a heart filled experience it was, reuniting Eileen with over 6000 photos, which covered many years of her life prior, to this almost tragic mishap.
