Maungatapere Tag | The Ring Finders

Wedding Ring Lost in Sand at Glinks Gully, Dargaville – Found.

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)

I was just about to head out for a kayak when the phone rang…
Nick had been staying at Glinks Gully near Dargaville with his young family for the last week, playing daily in the sand dunes and playground.
It wasn’t until later he realised his wedding ring of only 4 months was no longer on his finger – Could I help?

While Glinks was outside my regular area, I offered to try and find a detectorist near by but with my near 100% hit rate, Nick decided he wanted me to do the job.

The kayak came off the car, the detectors went in, and I started on the 170km, two and a bit hour journey…

Nick was already onsite and greeted me warmly, he was very keen to recover his lost ring and having read some of my success stories on my page was upbeat about a positive result.

Before I got the gear out, I did my usual walk and talk – Looking at the scene, drawing on my Search & Rescue tracking and Clue Processing experience and asking what may have appeared to be rather odd questions, but all building the behavioural profile of Nicks actions leading up to the loss. I isolated two high probability areas, if it wasn’t there I would start on ‘the rest of the world’ as I refer to anything outside the indicated search area.

With the machine in hand and Nick in tow, I started on the first area. This was a playground with a deep base of soft, golden fluffy sand where Nick had been pushing his son on the swings. A ring dropped here would have vanished below the surface instantly.

First run under the swings gave a $2 coin, then on the other side of the swing a solid “Lost Wedding Ring” tone 🙂

I shook the sand out of the scoop to reveal the ring, and with a big grin tossed it over to Nick – His face was in disbelief as he looked down at his wedding ring sitting safely in his hand.