November 21st, 2009 by Brad Lovell

Yesterday I was checking my phone messages and I seemed to have missed a phone call from a gentleman by the name of John. According to the voice message John had left, his good friend Lisa lost her wedding ring whilst body boarding in the surf at Maroubra Beach. After returning the phone  call to John, I was honest with him and mentioned recovery of lost rings in the surf are very difficult. In fact, from memory I have only ever successfully recovered one ring in the surf. John was aware that the chances of recovery we’re low, but as always I was up for the challenge. After arriving at Maroubra Beach later that afternoon, I began asking Lisa questions about how she lost the ring. I thought she may have been conscious of the exact moment the ring fell off her finger, but unfortunately this was not the case. Although, she was 100% confident she had the ring on while in the water, and by the time she left the water the ring was gone. The only positive to this whole situation was the ring was lost at high tide, and by the time I arrived the tide was low. I had John and Lisa engrave markings in the sand as to the approximate area Lisa had been body boarding. Since the tide was low, I started my search in the deeper area first…slowly working my way back to the shore line. Being a warm day, the beach was very crowded…and as always people continuously approached me asking what I was looking for. As luck would have it, the beach was incredibly clean. After about an hour of slowly griding the wet water with the metal detector I only received 2 decent signals. One being a pull tab, and the other a bottle cap. By the time I was in ankle deep water I was able to cover more ground without being pounded by waves. Not long after, the underwater metal  detector picked up a nice loud solid signal. I plunged the scoop into the sand and detected the same hole again. No more signal.. Cool I retrieved the signal in one scoop. After emptying the scoop full of sand I began searching with my fingers for what was creating the signal. I was a little disappointed when I caught a glimpse of silver in my eye. I was hoping for a gold wedding band. But after picking up this silver sand covered object, I realised it was definitely a ring! Not only was it a ring, it was a huge ring! The kind of ring that could choke an elephant!  I went back to my car and called Lisa. I asked her what the ring looked like, and she described the exact ring! A huge white gold ring, with a large diamond in the middle, and smaller diamonds curling around the band. I could hear the excitement in Lisa’s voice on the phone, and received a big hug when returning her ring. This is one of the perks of the job It was a pleasure to meet Lisa and John, and thanks for putting up with all my questions before the start of the search.