March 24th, 2009 by Brad Lovell

Meera and her husband we’re at a local playground with their baby when her necklace got caught on a swing. This caused some damage to the necklace, causing two gold pendants (one with an embedded diamond) to fall into the mulched surface. These pendants had significant cultural meaning to Meera and her marriage, so recovery was important. Meera and her husband tried their best to find the pendants but had no luck. So they decided to give me a call as a last resort. Unfortunately due to current family commitments, I could only arrange to start the search at night. Not that this is going to make recovery that much more difficult. I am used to hunting at night…So myself and Meera’s husband set out to the playground armed with a metal detector and torch. What I figured would be an easy job, turned out to be not so easy. After searching the entire playground, I was unable to find either one of the two pendants. When detecting around playground equipment, it is difficult to search close to the metal poles supporting the equipment. So after having no luck searching the entire playground, I began moving the mulch that surrounded the metal support poles away from the equipment. From there I began detecting the newly positioned mulch without any interference. This turned out to be a good move. After about 2.5 hours of searching, I managed to find the gold/diamond pendant in the moved mulch. Meera’s husband was shocked I was able to find it, and figured there was very little chance of recovery. I continued the search for the remaining lost pendant in the same proximety…but unfortunately had no luck at finding it. It was time to call it a night… If I am in the area again, I will have another search for the second lost pendant. These pendants are very small, so finding them is difficult. I have added a small photo of the diamond pendant I found. Once again, I appoligise for the quality of the photo from my iPhone.