On Thursday, June 4, 2026, and just after 6 p.m., I received the following text. “Hello Jim, I found you on ring finders and I am visiting Carolina Beach with my family. I lost my wedding ring at 4:45 p.m. today almost directly in front of lifeguard stand 5. I honestly would replace it if it was just a wedding band, but half of the ring is my late mothers who died when I was in my twenties. Thanks for your time and my name is Damien. I immediately sent him a text to call. I got more details on the situation and told him that we missed the tide for the day. We made arrangements to meet the next day before low tide.
On Friday, low tide wasn’t until 5 pm, giving way to stronger winds with higher and harder waves. Damien was waiting in his driveway when I arrived, and we made our way to find a place to park. We got lucky and got permission from one of the rental owners to park in his space. When we hit the beach, it was as I expected with lots of wind and good size waves. Damien pointed out the suspected area, which was between the #5 lifeguard stand and maybe 30 yards north. I started an east/west grid line getting out as far as I could with no luck. After close to a couple of hours and getting pounded by waves, I called the search off. I knew I’d be back; it was just a question of when.
Looking at Saturday morning’s low tide, the tide tables showed it was going to be around 5 am. That would mean I’d have to get up at 2:30 am to make the hour and half plus drive. I opted to wait until Sunday and hit the 7 am tide, leaving the house a little after 4am. On Sunday, everything went as planned and I arrived at the beach before 6 which gave me a little over an hour to search.
When I walked out on the beach, the wind and waves were as good as they were going to get. I started west of the lifeguard stand and got out about chest deep; farther than I expected to search for his ring. About halfway across the search area, as I made my turn to head back to shore, I swung the coil out and got a loud, solid signal. As I stuck the scoop in the sand, I noticed the target had settled inside the trough. The trough is what causes the waves to crash, which is exactly what was happening. Two scoops and I had the target out. I washed the sand out of the scoop in the waves and heard the clatter of the ring. Looking inside the scoop, there was Damian’s very special ring. While I was admiring the ring in my scoop, the coil was getting covered in sand that was washing into the trough with the waves. As I pulled the coil out of the sand, I broke the coil ears that connect the coil to the shaft. This flaw is one of the very few pitfalls of the Equinox 800s.
I took a picture of the ring and made my way back to the car. I headed to the rental Damian, and his family was staying in to give them a good morning surprise. Unfortunately, they had left the night before and had driven home. So at 7:13 am, I sent the picture along with a text saying, “You awake?? Yours?” At 8:39 am on my drive home I got a response, “That is it! Give me a sec, literally just woke up.” I called him shortly after and he was truly surprised his treasure was found. He texted me a little later saying how grateful he was that his special ring was found. He also stated in the text, “Half of that gold in the ring was from my mom who passed away in 2011. You can see the line in the ring where it separates it.” He sent me his address, and I got the ring in the mail Monday.
Damian – Thank you for trusting me to help find your very special and sentimental wedding band.
Jim
