This past autumn, my wife was hospitalized for about two months with a very serious illness. We live in the mountains of the Eastern Sierra, but the hospital was near Santa Barbara, about 300 miles from our home. So I pretty much lived out of our motorhome along the beaches during that time. I spent most of my time at her bedside, but I did allow myself a couple of hours each morning for some beach metal detecting with my MXT before going to the hospital. Doing so became very therapeutic for me, as I was able to temporarily forget about my worries and to just enjoy being outside with my feet on the sand next to the breaking surf and focus on nothing but my metal detector as the sun came up. [split] Typically, I would just fill my hip bag with trash and put an occasional loose coin in my pocket that the MXT would find, but one day turned out to be slightly more worthwhile. It was shortly after dawn, I was hunting near a lifeguard tower that was just across the road from a large, expensive resort that is popular with overseas travelers. After about an hour I got a real nice tone, pinpointed the target, then plunged my scoop into the sand and pulled up a beautiful ladies diamond ring with 37 diamonds perfectly set in three rows across the top. Before going to the hospital that day, I stopped by a jewelry store and was told that it is worth about $3,000. The best part is that it is my wife’s’ ring size and it looked great on her finger while she made a full recovery.