Ring lost at Mission Bay found
Brendan and his family were visiting here in San Diego. On their last night here, they had a bonfire on the beach. While opening a plastic bag, it popped loose suddenly, and Brendan’s wedding ring went flying into the dry sand and disappeared. Not knowing exactly where, or, even which direction it went, it was impossible to find without a metal detector. An online search for help resulted, and I got a call the next morning. As luck would have it, I was only a couple of blocks away presiding over our local detecting club monthly 
meeting. Brendan explained the situation and that they were leaving town in the early afternoon, so, time was fairly important in getting his ring back before they headed to the airport. The meeting soon ended and I headed over to conduct the search. We met at the site and Brendan gave me a good idea as to where ground zero was. I started a spiral pattern out from that point. First “good” sounding target ended up being a pull tab. Second good sounding target read the same, and was Brendan’s ring. A relieved Brendan can now head home with his wedding band on his finger. A pleasure to meet you Brendan, and thank you for the reward.
Well it goes without saying that you never know what kind of events may lead up to a ring getting lost. This story is no exception. On May 8th I was contacted by the best man of a wedding party. He explained that during the couples ceremony, at a bayside resort, he had accidentally dropped the brides ring onto the deck and it slipped thru the cracks and into the bay! At the time he had called I was headed out to dinner with my family for Mother’s Day and it was just about high tide. After receiving some pictures and descriptions of the area I knew this could be very challenging as the search area was located under a deck / pier that extended over the bulkhead and into the bay. I figured it would be best to wait until dead low tide as the area was in about 12-15’ of water at the moment. Around 12:30am I headed over with a friend whom was lending a hand and met up with the remaining members and guests of the wedding party. Luckily the staff at “The Reeds” in Stone Harbor NJ were awesome at helping to pinpoint the area and provide a floating dock to work from, kind of like Tom Sawyers raft, lol. They even went so far as to remove some of the mahogany decking in an attempt to locate the ring. Obviously the wedding party was devastated over this accident and all reasonable attempts were made to find the dropped ring. You could feel the obvious tension surrounding the events that unfolded and this just drove the determination to a positive outcome further! After making our way down to the dock we boarded the floating dock and paddled under the deck / pier to the approximate area. After checking for about 15-20 minutes I was able to recover the brand new never worn rose gold and diamond band!! Much to my and everyone’s relief! The ring was under some of the structural members in about 2’ of water amongst some horseshoe crabs. The bride, groom, best man and remaining members of the wedding party were ecstatic!! Another happy couple! Congratulations and here’s to a lifetime of happiness!!
