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Lost white Gold Tiffany-T Ring Recovered, Crooked Lake – Angola, Indiana

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Saturday evening, after the Crooked Lake sandbar Music Festival (in water event), Noah and Kayla returned to their dock site where Kayla went for a short swim around the pontoon. She swam along the side of the pontoon, between it and another pier, when her hand hit the lake bottom for a moment and she felt her ring slide off her finger. She stopped, surfaced, checked her finger and saw it in fact had fallen off.
The bottom is a layer of clay silt over some gravel and sand. The spot of loss was about 3-4 feet deep. They tried to find it, kids helped also, to no avail.
A friend of mine, familiar with my services, put them in contact with me and arrangements were made for the recovery attempt this morning. She sounded confident about the exact spot it had fell off, which was nice to hear.
Kayla sent me a picture of the ring type, a Tiffany & Co “T” ring (a non closed ring), white gold with some diamonds. Non-closed rings, especially with that large of a gap, can be difficult for most detectors to sound off on. It’s just a phenomenon that occurs, as with many bracelets and necklaces also.
I’m running a Minelab Manticore detector, which is one of the newest and most sensitive units at this time. I have confidence that if any machine would “see” that ring, it would.
I let them know about the possibility, that the ring may be undetectable, but assured them that I had confidence in my detector.
In the water I went, began searching, found a couple washers, quarters, several 22 bullets, several prop curls and some nails, but no ring. Expanded the area slighly, to under the pier where her right hand was favoring, but still no ring. Worked the area from different directions, still no ring. Switched to the extra sensitive gold mode and re-swept the area further, finding a few more tiny metallic objects, but still no ring. Got the dive mask and snorkel out, worked some zones visually and with a pinpointer, finding a couple tid bits of 22 shell casings and nails again. About an hour had passed now, I was getting a bad feeling, that either the ring was indeed undetectable, or that maybe it just wasn’t there anymore.
I asked if anyone had seen them searching for it, or if they told anyone where it was lost. They said yes, two younger kids saw them searching, knew what they were seraching for and said they were going to go get goggles and come back to search for it (hopefully didn’t find it and maybe keep it). Well, I had scoured the loss spot and beyond, many many times over and I could see Kayla had a look of sadness, because it appeared as if her ring she cherished dearly was not gonna be found.
I asked if it was ok that i just try another little bit, one more hail Mary (which I seem to do on most searches). Got a very weak and low signal, but faintly repeatable, got the pinpointer down on it and got a somewhat good response with that too. Reached down, grabbed a handfull of bottom, brought my hand up to the surface, the muck fell off the sides of my hand and a nice sight to see revealed itself to me and Kayla that was looking down from the pier above. She was ecstatic, I was very thrilled and relieved (lotsa eyes upon me from above, kids watching too). Walked over and put it in her hand, carefully.

Afterwards, on dry land, I asked if I could test the ring to see how the detector reacted with it. About 2.5″ max, in gold mode, super faint 03 vdi. Glad it worked out, as were they.

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Lost Gold wedding ring recovered 20 years later, Lake James, Angola Indiana

  • from Granger (Indiana, United States)
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Last month, Corey contacted me after reading about a guy from The Ringfinders, me, recovering a lost ring for someone that lives on the same chain of lakes that he does. We spoke and he mentioned that the lost item was his late father’s original gold wedding ring, lost many years ago. He said it was certainly in the water, near their pier in probably 3 to 4 feet of water.
Fast forward about a month, we discussed the details further and we were able to finally set a date and time for the recovery attempt.
After some mild rain storms cleared out, I arrived all prepared for the search. Initially he mentioned a rather small search area, but this grew somewhat as he pointed out the potential loss areas.
Immediately, I was getting signal after signal, from large amounts of metallic debris, filling my headphones with all kinds of sounds. I quickly covered the area initially for any obvious clean and loud targets, removing several coins, pull tabs, pull rings and bottle caps.
Next, I slowed down to do a more methodical grid-like search, finding several more targets amongst the iron/metallic debris around the pier.
I covered the area from several directions, moving slightly outside the area where he thought the ring may be, just in case.
It was thought that his dad had lost the ring either cranking the boat-lift wheel, or doing something around the pontoon boat that was on the lift (lift no longer there).
Corey said that his dad even tried finding his lost ring with some sort of metal detector that he had for locating water pipes (when the lake homes were just starting to be built there). This home was built around 1936. Corey also tried using that same detector device to find the ring in the past, with no luck.
Being rather tenacious, I searched and searched for hours and ended up digging every target I heard, even the “iffy ones”, just in case again. There was one particular piece of junk i dug, a large perforated tin can lid that was over a foot deep. This deeper junk target will come into play later in this story. I scoured under and around the pier posts and had to contend with digging/scooping in lots of weeds towards the deeper end of the pier. If it was in there, I was going to find it!
It was going on 3 1/2 hours now, long beyond the half hour or hour I had planned to search. I had already said “I’ll do one more grid” to myself several times over. At about the 4 hour mark, not having eaten lunch, hungry, thirsty, skeptical and ready to call it, I told myself “ok, one more absolutely last sweep”! In the deeper water, near where the back of the pontoon would’ve been I got a good sounding target in the edge of the temporary crater where I had scooped the big tin can lid. I scooped out a big heavy blob of weeds and muck, slopped it into my floating sifter and checked it with the pinpointer. The pinpointer rang out quickly, so it definitely wasn’t something small like a penny or a fishing sinker this time. I swirled and sloshed the sifter around some more, poked the pinpointer back in it and as the muddy water began to turn clear, I could see the wonderful color of gold and the round shape of a ring’s edge showing itself!

Got it! This ring had been in the water for the past 20 years now! That large tin can lid was right under where the ring had settled and due to being so large, it “masked out” the ring from being seen initially.

It’s always an amazing feeling of satisfaction when there is so much sentimental value involved. I worked hard for this one, but the persistence paid off.

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