I received a call from a young lady who lost a sentimental ring that belonged to her late grandmother. It always tugs at my heartstrings when I hear from people who’ve lost something so special, and I definitely do what I can to help as a metal detectorist.

In this case, the loss was in an area where special permissions were needed in order to legally search. After a long wait, I finally received the “okay” that we needed. When I arrived, both the young lady and her mom were present and willing to get their own hands dirty in the search.

The grass was damp – the location was near a sprinkler head and it was the cause of the loss as well! A quick rinse in the powerful spray of the sprinkler caused the ring to fly off. When it happened, she searched the area including into a really massive shrub! But after multiple attempts to search, she thought it might be lost forever.

I started the search near the sprinkler head in question, and we started noticing a lot of trash signals that caused interference with each other. We pulled up the trash items just slightly below the surface, and we knew that the ring would likely be just below the surface as well.

After circling outward from the sprinkler, we checked under the shrub, but came up with only foil trash. We were about to call it quits – assuming that maybe someone had picked it up before we were able to search. But I know to always give it one more try.

Back near the sprinkler where we removed some trash signals, we had a fresh signal on the detector. I had the young lady check the spot carefully and I heard her gasp – “no way!” And just below the surface, likely stepped on when initially searching, was her grandmother’s ring. Here is just after that moment captured on video:

This young lady and her mom were both willing to get their hands dirty and it paid off. Even though she had searched the area herself many times before I was called out to help – she didn’t give up! It was a team effort that paid off.