"ONE FINE DAY"

 

By Harry Niemeyer

 

   My wife Jan and I took a vacation at the shore in Avalon, New Jersey last month.  Our friends Mary Lou and Louie stayed with us and we hunted together for several days.  The weather was hot and sunny, never rained so the hunting was very good.  We found the usual coins, toys and junk but not any gold was found on this trip.  Jan was using her Whites Classic and I my Whites XLT.

     On our last day Jan & I were working the beach for the last time. There was a man watching us and looked very depressed.  He came over to Jan and asked her if we could look for a ring that his fiancée had lost the day before.  He told us that he had rented a detector the day before, and that he searched all afternoon and only found one quarter.   

    We both agreed to search for it.  We started to grid the area of the beach where he thought she lost it. Jan worked east and west while I worked north and south, across her path.  We worked the beach about 30 minutes when his fiancée came down to the beach to see if he had had any luck finding the ring.  We were introduced to her and told her no luck yet but we will continue to look for the ring.  She went back to the condo to get us a drink of water.  A little later I felt that we had done our best and went over to tell him that it was hopeless to look further.  Well about two feet in front of him I got a good signal, I scooped up a large bail of sand and shook out all the stones and shells. There at the bottom of the scoop was the largest rock that I have ever seen.  I called Jan over and the guy just about died.  He was very excited and hugged me and Jan several times. 

     While we waited for his fiancée to come on down he suggested that we take the water cups from her before we tell her that we found the ring.  She soon came with the water and we took the drinks off her.  I told her we were not having much luck searching the beach and suggested that she may have lost it in the water.

     You could see that she was ready to cry, her fiancé than slowly held up the ring and she started crying and screaming "Oh my God you found my ring" -- she could not believe it.  We made a very happy girl that day. The ring was a round brilliant cut solitaire diamond that weighed one and three quarter carets, it had four channel cut diamonds on each side of the lone solitaire diamond.  The eight diamonds totaled one half caret which gave the ring a total of two and one quarter carets -- in a striking platinum setting.  

    They offered us money, dinner or a trip to the Atlantic City casinos, all of which we turned down.  We told them that the thrill of finding the ring as well as seeing the look on their faces when the ring was placed back on her finger was reward enough.

     While walking and detecting on down the beach Jan & I talked about how really nice it felt to return something so valuable to the people who lost it -- more satisfying than finding it alone and being able to keep it.  We glowed for a week afterwards. 

    This week we found a wonderful note in our mail box from Susan and Rick telling us how we will never know how truly grateful they were.  Jan and I think that everyone should keep up random acts of kindness and caring.  We were glad we were able to help.   

  

A year later we received a card and a photo of Susan and Rick coming down the aisle in Hawaii at their wedding.  Their comment was

   “ Don’t worry we now put all our jewelry in the hotel safe”.

Submitted By:
Harry Niemeyer
73 McGovern Blvd
Crescent, PA 15046
724-457-0720

This page last edited on 
Wednesday, July 16, 200807/16/08 07:05:31 PM