25 Year Work Anniversary Ring Lost and Found – Another Reason Not to Rent a Metal Detector in Madison
I received an email from Al on Easter Sunday. I was up at my sister’s house in La Crosse, so I wasn’t able to call Al back right away. I did exchange some emails back and forth to ensure that this wasn’t a recent loss, as timing is so important when attempting to find a lost ring. The quicker you can get our on site, the higher likelihood you have of finding your lost ring.
The next day Al and I finally connected via phone. Al explained that the ring was a men’s gold ring, with a black onyx center stone with diamonds along the side. He had received the ring as recognition for 25 years of service from a local insurance company. Al explained that he was out mowing his lawn on his riding mower. Behind Al’s lot is a common greenway, which he frequently mows and maintains – almost like part of his own yard. He approached a set of trees which hadn’t been trimmed recently – so the branches hung down low. In order to mow around the tree, Al had to raise up the branches with his hand as he passed under the tree on his mower. While doing this, one of the small braches hooked around his ring and when he let go of the branch, the ring was ripped from his finger and flung off into the grass. He stopped his mower, got off and got a leaf rake. He raked the entire area, hoping to stir up the ring. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to find anything.
A year passed, and Al always wondered if his ring was still out there. One day, he was reading the Sunday paper and came across a story by Doug Moe, a local reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. The story was about our Ring Finding activities (http://host.madison.com/news/local/columnists/doug-moe/doug-moe-the-man-who-finds-lost-rings/article_3ef64cca-adf5-5735-8399-4f6e440631e0.html). Al read the story and wondered if I would be able to find his ring he lost the previous year. Al had always thought about renting a metal detector, but was worried he wouldn’t know how to work it. Al did the right thing by calling us. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of people renting a metal detector – only to become completely frustrated after only a couple of mins.
I told Al I would need to check with my wife to see what our plans were, and we tentatively planned to get together over the weekend. After hearing Al’s story, I knew that I would be able to find his ring. If you know the exact area and moment you lost your ring – someone with a metal detector will find it, almost 100% of the time (unless someone else finds it first J).
After hanging up the phone with Al, I talked with my wife and the weekend was free. Only problem was it looked like rain for the next 7 days. If you read my other stories, you’ll know that I metal detector with my two kids. I told them the story about Al’s ring, and they started to get excited. You see, we had been on 3 previous hunts where we did not find the ring we were looking for. We are scheduled to go back on all three, as they were all lost between 1 and 8 years ago, and we haven’t given up yet. Al’s ring sounded to me like a slam dunk. Unfortunately, it was Monday night and the UW Badgers were playing for the National Championship against Duke – first time since 1941. We have season tickets and love Badger Basketball. Tipoff was a little after 8:00 … it was 5:45. I looked at the kids and said, “Maybe we just go out and take a look at the site and see what we find?” They were totally on board, and we were all excited to break our dry streak. We jumped in the van.
Al only lived about 15 mins away, however, as we pulled into his driveway it started to rain. Argh. We decided to give it a shot anyways, and headed to the backyard. Al explained how he lost again, and we started to search the area. We got some hits right away, but all turned out to be junk. You’d be surprised how much junk is buried in your backyard. I always tell people not to get discouraged when we don’t find their ring right away, and we assured Al that we’d keep looking until we found it. I widened the search area around the tree, not knowing how far that branch might have flung the ring. After about 20 mins, my daughter says to me, “That tree over there looks a lot like this tree.” I’m not sure if Al heard her or not, but a min later he said, “Maybe it was closer to that tree.” Sure enough, after moving over … the very first hit we got was Al’s ring – about an inch below the grass.
Al was relieved to have the ring back on his finger, his wife also was surprised we were able to find it … and even in the rain! We quickly returned home to watch Bucky play a heck of a game, but came up short in the end.
Thanks for the reward Al and so glad we were able to get that ring back on your finger.
Sarah and her husband had spent the day at Laguna Beach. The weather has been awesome, sunny and temperatures in the mid 80’s. They left about 2pm to get on the road before traffic got too bad. Thirty minutes down the road Sarah realiz
ed she did not have her wedding ring set. Two very special rings that she has worn for over 25 years. Her and her husband had recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary last week. She knew that she had put the rings in the cup holder of her beach chair while putting on sunscreen. There was a possibility that the rings were in the sand where they had been sitting. Returning to the beach and sifting through the sand with their fingers with no success . Sarah Google searched “how to find a ring in the sand” . Up popped a link to TheRingFinders with my contact information. I was in my car about 8 miles away, but it took about 20 – 25 minutes to get to her location. Just as I pulled up Sarah’s husband found the larger ring. I was able to locate the smaller ring after a few swings of my CTX3030 minelab metal detector. It was a weak signal which may have been because it was in a vertical position. It may have been buried a little deeper because they had been moving around a lot of sand doing their search. What’s most important is Sarah has both of her very special rings back on her finger, hopefully for another 25 years. Sarah commented how her smart phone and the internet worked to bring us together. I agree, I have the metal detecting equipment and know how to use them, but the smart phones and internet makes these recoveries happen.
How many people have been given a very special gift only to loose it shortly after receiving it? Jared got a unique gift from his mother for Christmas–a silver pendant– and lost it two days later while playing soccer! He is a good friend of mine and knows that I enjoy helping people find their lost rings and things. And the field where he lost his pendant is just across the street from where we live so I figured in my spare time I could begin a grid search of the 70X50 yard field. So early the next evening I set up my Whites DFX in Coin and Jewelry mode and started down the middle of the field. And as it was a very recent drop and the pendant being silver I figured it would give a loud signal and be just under the grass. Sure enough on my 5th pass down center field, there hidden in the grass was Jared’s pendant! So glad to help out and thanks Jared for the reward!
Jason called me Saturday evening from home in Corona, Calif. asking if I could help him. His friend had told him about TheRingFinders. He noticed his wedding ring missing after six hours of doing chores around his large property. Jason had spent a day and a half retracing all his activities in search of his wedding band. He lives on a large piece of property and had been doing a lot of work in almost every part of his yard. Almost everything he had been doing could have caused his ring to slip from his finger. He was taking down Christmas lighting decorations from his two story house, fences and trees. Dealing with hundreds of feet of cords coiling them up then putting them in storage boxes. He also took the Christmas tree from the house cutting off all the limbs to put them in large trash containers. On top of all that work he spend time cleaning his pool. All these activities were done without gloves and all these activities were the type of movements that would cause a ring to slip off a finger.