Recovered Necklace for a Vacationing Couple from Utah
Published by Warren D. on 06/01/16
Yesterday I was detecting the wet sand behind a major hotel in Indialantic with my White's TDI pulse detector when a woman approached me and asked if I could help her and her husband. I said sure and she pointed up the beach to a neighboring hotel where a man in a orange shirt was scraping dry sand. I told her my name and asked what did they lose. She said a necklace with a gold charm on it. As we were walking there she said she took the necklace off and laid it on a beach chair and they forgot about it. When they left they just folded up the chairs and walked to the parking lot and put the chairs in the trunk of the car. I said I hear that happens a lot and it made me think this could be a little more complicated than I thought. I met her husband and said I'll do a big box search and drag my foot and trace their steps to the staircase. I kept asking them if I was staying in the general area OK. For about an hour the woman followed me and I gave her a running commentary about targets and some were too deep to be a recent drop and the distance was about 60 yards from the chair spot to the staircase.
I found a tungsten ring, a quarter and bottle caps and was moving kind of fast to cover the area and I sensed they were leaving soon and Susan said they were flying out that day. I said give me your contact info and if you want put it on craig's list lost and found and someone may find it. Well she and her husband decided to go into the hotel and prepare to check out and I continued hunting another 15 to 20 minutes and I got a hit. It was about midway between the chair location and the staircase and I assume the coin/charm must have fell down on it's edge and didn't lay flat. Coming from a different direction my coil got a hit. I brought the White's TDI with the Sierra T foot coil 18" by 5" because my plan was to do the wet sand and go deep. But this was hunting for a shallow target but the size of the coil gave me good coverage. I got it in one scoop, it was shallow maybe under a half inch of sand. All balled up the chain was very fine. Luckily it was hidden or it would have been a eyeball find for somebody.
I pulled out my phone and their contact info and I said Susan, I got it come back to the beach. They came back out to the beach and they were holding hands. Her husband Rocky tried to hand me a bunch of bills and I said no thanks, I like the challenge. I said have a good vacation now and I bet you lost a lot of sleep last night.
They're back home now in Utah and they just sent me these pics. The charm or coin is a gold coin $10 or $20 eagle gold piece.