North Myrtle Beach SC Ring Finders Tag | The Ring Finders

White Gold Wedding Band and Engagement Ring, Lost in the Surf, Found and Returned in Myrtle Beach SC

  • from North Myrtle Beach (South Carolina, United States)
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A little after 6:30 p.m., I received a text from Maryline that said, “Hello, I found your contact on the internet to help find lost rings. Lost mine today on Myrtle Beach. I’m wondering if you could please help out.” I asked her to call me so I could get the details. When she called, I learned she had lost her rings in the soft sand, and she could put me in the general area. I asked her to text me the address and was on my way.

On the way there, I got another text from her saying, “We are checking some pictures we took, and it seems like it could have fallen on the wet sand or the sea.” Uh-oh, I’m thinking we may have a problem if the rings were lost in the water. We were just coming off of high tide; so I might not be able to reach them. I called her to verify the time. She said one of the pictures showing the rings, while holding her baby in the surf, was about 4:30. Ok, that was about an hour before high tide. So, things were looking good again, the tide had turned, and it was getting close to an hour after high tide.

I met Maryline in the parking lot of the resort and we walked a couple of blocks to the beach. She walked me out on the beach and showed me where they had been sitting. She then took me down towards the water and showed me the general area where she was sitting with her baby. I started a north/south grid line about ankle deep with plans to work up the slope towards the dry sand. My thought was that if she was sitting in the surf and had put her hands in the wet sand, her rings would come right off her finger. I was probably three quarters of the way up the slope and hit a solid 6 on the VDI (visual display indicator), which is exactly what I was expecting for a white gold ring. A couple of inches away I was picking up an 8 on the VDI, again what I’d expect for a little bigger white gold ring. I took a scoop of wet sand and dumped it on the beach. I immediately saw her small wedding band. Boom!! I held it up and Maryline came running, jumping and screaming to get her ring. Now to get the engagement ring out of its hiding place in the sand. Unfortunately, the waves were filling up the hole with water and sand, burying the engagement ring. Suddenly, I wasn’t picking up the engagement ring on the detector. I think the ring got turned on its side and my detection area was now very small. So basically, I was digging blind and pulling up big scoops of sand. I finally pulled up a scoop and before I could run the detector over it, Maryline’s brother-in-law, TD saw it and reached down in the ball of sand and pulled it out. Maryline started jumping up and down and she got so excited that another couple came to see what was going on. Finding people’s lost items and handing it back to them never gets old.

TD – Thanks for your help!

Maryline – Thank you for calling me and allowing me to help find your lost treasures.

Jim

 

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Wedding Band and Engagement Ring Lost in the Ocean at Cherry Grove SC

  • from North Myrtle Beach (South Carolina, United States)
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About 8 p.m. on Sunday, Aug 6th, I got a text with a picture from Ariel. The text said, “My daughter lost this ring today, in the ocean right in front of 53rd N Myrtle Beach. She also lost her wedding ring which goes with this but she is more concerned with the engagement ring.” I didn’t see the text until about 3 hours later, and responded asking what time and how deep she was. Ariel responded back saying, “It was high tide, around 12:30-1:00 pm. She was waist deep. There is a walk through at 53rd street and we were to the right about 100 feet.” I did a quick check of the tide tables and saw the next low tide was around 6:30 am Monday. I texted Ariel asking if there was a chance that someone could meet me in the morning around 7 am to show me the area. She responded “Absolutely, see you at 7.”

I got there a little early Monday morning and texted Ariel that I was there. I then marked off about a 100 feet and started an east/west grid search. Shortly after that Ariel, her husband Dan, and her daughter Hailey and her husband Justin showed up. I learned the wedding band and engagement were White Gold. This told me I was looking for a low number on the Equinox 800. Combined, they had done everything right. They had used a stationary landmark higher on the beach to mark where Hailey had lost her rings. I repositioned myself another 30 plus feet down the beach and started another grid search. Not too long after that, I got an iffy signal that would occasionally hit a 5. Ok, that’s what I was looking for. I dug a couple of scoops and got the target out of the sand. Earlier, Hailey had explained what the wedding band looked like. After spreading the sand out with my hands, I saw Hailey’s wedding band. They had moved down the beach and came running when I held Hailey’s ring up in the air and called her name. One ring found with one to go. I searched in a 10X10 foot square in and around the hole I dug to find the wedding band with negative results. My thinking was if both rings came off together, then both rings should be within a foot of each other. By now I was losing the tide, so I called Matt Fry, TRF Myrtle Beach and asked if he’d like to help later that afternoon. He didn’t hesitate to lend a hand.

Matt and I both showed up about 5 pm that afternoon ready to find the engagement ring. We split the area in half, he went north and I went south. We’d been out there a while, when a couple of buddies, who were out metal detecting the beach, stopped and joined in on the search. Now there were 4 guys with 3 different metal detectors searching from above the high tide line out to about knee deep and from north to south. We were grid searching, overlapping, and basically searching the entire beach for more than an hour with absolutely no luck. Again, the tide had changed so we called it a night. The 4 of us stood out there trying to figure out what could have happened to the approximate size 3 engagement ring with a pretty good size diamond on it.

I had a hard time letting this one go, so I text Ariel telling her that I wanted to try a different machine, my White’s PI and look again Tuesday evening at around 7 pm. I had another ring search pop up that I thought I could find quickly and still be at Hailey’s spot to search. Things don’t always work out as planned so I rescheduled Hailey’s search for 7 am on Wednesday. Wednesday morning I got there and got the area confused. I grid searched south of the area which worked out because the currents on Sunday, the day of the loss, were running to the south. Ariel showed up just as I was finished and showed me the right area. So I made another trip out with the PI on Wednesday evening and did another grid search and still wasn’t able to find the engagement ring. I just don’t have an answer as to what may have happened to Hailey’s engagement ring.

Hailey – I’m really sorry I couldn’t get both rings back to you but thank you for trusting me to try.

Jim

   

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