lost gold ring in west Virginia Tag | The Ring Finders

Call Ray at MyGoldFinder for lost items 571.258.7217.

This call originally started off with a call from the customer’s best friend Laura. After the initial call with Laura I was not able to reach the customer back and found that she had contacted another specialist, Brian Rudolph. After an initial search Brian had referred the customer back to me and I arranged to meet the customer, Lacie, this past Sunday at Moulton Park in West Virginia along the Shenandoah River. Before arranging to go to the site I contacted a friend of mine, Rob Ellis, who is also a recovery specialist on theRingFinders network to see if he’d like to join me as I didn’t know how involved this water search was going to be. Rob is a great underwater gridding specialist and I knew I could use his help on this one.

The customer, Lacie had been wearing her late husband’s grandmother’s white gold engagement ring, so the monumental importance of locating and returning this ring to Lacie was not lost to Rob and I, we had to find this ring.

On Sunday Rob and I arrived early at Moulton Park along the Shenandoah River and met the customer to gather more details of the lost ring. Lacie stated she had been in the water approximately 20-30 yards from the bank and was heading into towards the shoreline, as she got closer she got caught up on some underwater tree debris and tripped enough to where when she was trying to get her balance the ring slid off her finger, she could actually see the ring going down in the water and attempted to grab it while it sank, but no luck. This would have been about 10-20 feet from the shoreline, a small area so Rob and I suspected we should be able to locate it easily. Well….nothing is ever as easy as you think it’s going to be.

Originally we thought this might be a search that required dive gear so we both brought everything needed for a longer dive time, 2 tanks each. But since the water level was low we only had to search in 2-3′ of water level, snorkeling was the best option in this case. The river was not fast moving, almost no current at all since there was no recent rainfall. As soon as we entered the water you sank into the deep mud, in some areas up to 1-2 feet thick. Rob and I spent 7 hours on Sunday, pulled approx. 20-25 lbs of debris out of a 10′ x 10′ area of the search, so much trash!! Rob did an exhaustive solid circular grid within the area we believed Lacie and dropped the ring. But alas, no ring located on this trip.

I followed up with another short search the next day for about 2.5 hours, focusing again within the target area the customer believed she had lost the ring and while pulling out more trash than I care to think about…still no luck with locating the ring, very frustrating!

There was only going to be a day or so before the area was hit with some significant thunderstorms so I wanted to give it one more try before the week was out and the river became too challenging with the high waters. Rob was also planning on meeting me for this final trip of the week. I unloaded my gear, donned the wetsuit and gloves, turned on the Equinox 800 detector and entered the water to the left side of an old tree hugging the river bank, as the detector was on already I immediately started a sweep right at the bank’s edge………within 60 seconds of being in the water I got a hit within 1-2 feet from the bank, more trash??!! Or so I thought…I reached down with the pinpointer, located a target then as I have done 100 times already I slowly pulled up a large fist full of mud…the pinpointer was still pinging away at whatever was in my palm. As I slowly cleared away the mud, and in the bright morning sunshine, arose this sparkling white gold colored engagement ring, and I knew this was the ring Lacie had lost. Moral, never give up and always expect that a lost object may not be where you think it should be. How the ring went from 10-15 yards away to 1-2′ from the bank we’ll never know.

I sent Lacie a photo of the ring from my phone and immediately got a response, OMG!! Within 5 minutes Lacie was at the site to greet me and see her ring returned. She was so joyfully excited with tears running down her face and shaking almost uncontrollably. Lacie was so ecstatic to have this memory back in her possession, it meant to so much to her. This is theRingFinders goal, to bring happiness and joy with a special object returned!

Lacie,… Rob and I were so very pleased to be able to help bring some small joy into your life during this difficult time.

God Bless
Ray