A couple days ago Allison contacted me asking for assistance finding her daughter Marcy’s phone that Marcy had lost several days earlier in Pogonip park in Santa Cruz. They were able to track the phone as it was still sending a GPS signal and I have done a lot of metal detecting in this park due to it’s important place in Santa Cruz history. Marcy had been back to the site twice already looking for her phone thinking that it would be easy to find given the location it was transmitting, but was getting to the point of hopelessness as she felt it had gotten completely obfuscated by the tall dry grass.
I was reasonably confident in my ability to find the lost phone as the GPS signal narrowed it down to an area of about 100′ radius and I was very familiar with the park. Typically I prefer the person who lost the item to be with me for the search so that she can advise on specific details on where it was lost, but in this case with the GPS signal still transmitting I was happy to make an attempt on my own. I let them know that I would get started the following day late in the afternoon and that I would stay in touch to communicate details.
Yesterday I hiked into the site and spent some time reorienting myself based on Marcy’s map she sent and my live Google maps with a pin dropped of where the phone’s location was reporting from. The night before I had made this map in preparation, since I have experienced situations metal detecting where a map or satellite view of an area looks totally different from how the site looks on the ground. Curiously I had immediately started finding various items by eye right on the surface… a pair of beat up sunglasses, beer cans, bottles. So it appeared that a lot of human activity had transpired here. As I started searching with my metal detector I started finding more items, mostly by eye. I had even found a junk ring and a small silver earring, at which point I stopped and reached out to Marcy’s father (who was still in communication with Marcy by email) to find out if Marcy had also happened to lose a pair of sunglasses and silver earring. I wanted to find out if I was close to the location of where the phone had been lost, because the search was taking longer than I anticipated and it was definitely not spot on the coordinates that the phone was reporting.
When Marcy’s father responded that she had not lost these items I realized it was time to start expanding the search to the outer limits of the 100′ radius of the phone’s GPS accuracy. I told Marcy’s father that I would continue until dark. It seemed I had been finding everything but Marcy’s phone which was being quite elusive. But I was confident that it was still there. Sure enough, not long after this and as I was tracing the absolute edge of the GPS estimate, I finally spotted Marcy’s phone peeking through the tall grass! It had been just sitting there for several days, totally untouched but till transmitting it’s signal.
In this case a slow and meticulous search was as valuable as a metal detector. The phone was quite visible, but to find it required a lot of patience and estimation of where it could be based on good information. I contacted the family and shortly after met up with Marcy’s father to return the phone to her. We were all very happy to have her phone returned back to her and I was glad that I could be of assistance in their search.
