A Lost Treasure Found: The Return of Janine’s Wedding Ring
It all started with a text from Mike on Saturday evening – his wife Janine had lost her custom 8-diamond wedding ring back in the spring of 2023. They had tried everything: bought a metal detector (but had no idea how to use it) and enlisted 8 friends to help search the yard – all without luck.
The ring had gone missing while Janine was mowing the lawn, likely bouncing out of her sweatshirt pocket. I knew this wasn’t going to be a typical ring recovery. A heavy gold ring lost that long wouldn’t just be on the grass – it would be in the dirt.
Despite the 3-hour commute, cold 45-degree rain, and muddy conditions, I got to work. After digging around 60 holes across their 1.5-acre yard and 3 hours of searching… success! The ring was just a few feet off the driveway.
When Janine saw it, she burst into tears, gave me the biggest hug, and said she thought she’d never see it again.
There’s no better feeling than helping someone recover a symbol of love and memories they thought were lost forever.
Ally reached out to me, as a last-chance effort, in trying to get her precious engagement ring back, that unfortunately was dropped in the bay, on a nice Jersey Shore summer afternoon. She was very concerned there was no hope, as it had already been in the water for close to a week. I asked why she waited so long to call me, and her reply was “another local ring finder looked and had no luck”. I usually wont make it a practice to follow up behind another ring finder, but Ally hadn’t heard any more from him about his follow-up search, and was desperate at this point. After quite a long conversation, I decided Ally really needed me, and agreed to do the recovery. She sent me all the pertinent information, and I assured her I would go at the first possible brake in the, wind, and weather. The tides would also have to coincide with the search day. Our first conversation was 11 PM the day before, when I told her I would check in with her next morning. The following morning at 5 AM, as I was getting ready for work, I looked the weather over real good, and guess what, ” today is the day”. I text Ally and told her I was going for it today before low tide, she was thrilled with the timely updates, which she was not used to. I suited up with all my gear, and proceeded with the 1/3 mile walk in the water, just to get to the location it was lost. Once I was set up, I started to do a tight grid search, clearing over 20 signals, all of which had potential, to ensure her ring wasn’t missed by an overpowering signal. It really seemed like to many targets for an area that was supposedly searched, just 6 days prior, even though this is a huge boaters party area. And no they were not recent drops, as they were all down at least 4″ plus. I was super confident of my location, so I kept plugging along and after about 45 minutes my Metal Detector screamed out a low consistent tone, that almost immediately had Ally’s ring written all over it. While clearing the sand from my scoop, I could feel the tink, tink, tink of her ring, but at first glance, I didn’t see it hiding under the shells. But I knew that tink was NOT a shell, and gave the scoop a little wiggle, and there it was, WOW, was this a heart testing moment, seeing the diamonds sparkling back at me. My gut was right, I was in the right spot, and NJ Ring Finder just made someone’s last chance hopes a true reality. !!!!