Membership co-chair Dan Knight recently journeyed to the shore with club member(s) Diane Toogood and Dave Milsted to hunt the sands for gold this past month. Unfortunately the conditions were not that good for metal detecting and no gold was unearthed. After parting ways with his hunting partners, Dan decided to check the local ball fields near home in hopes of bettering the days' low tally of finds. After a few hours of "coinshooting", he had a reasonable amount of clad change and was ready to head for the house.
As we have heard many times before, Dan recounts that he was hoping for one more good target as he was heading for the car when a good solid nickel signal rang out in the middle of the field, an uncommon place for lost change. Probing down in the recently watered grass, he hit the mark about 2" down and popped up not a tarnished nickel but a golden class ring. While the beach was a wash-out, the gold was found closer to home!
Back at the house he cleaned off the find to discover it was a woman's 1983 La Salle College 10K class ring, complete with a full name engraved inside of it. Unfortunately a search of the local phone books did not find a match (as expected, it was the woman's maiden name), but with the Internet's capabilities, Dan soon had the La Salle Alumni Association on the line.
La Salle forwarded a message to the owner who then promptly called Dan to find out how in the world he had found her ring. It also turned out that the woman lived only a few miles from Dan's house, and a "reunion" was quickly arranged.
Dan hosted the woman's family at his home the following day and the now shined up ring was returned to it's rightful owner. The story about it's being lost sounded very familiar to Dan (and many of the clubs' other members I'm sure) as it involved sunscreen; "I was putting lotion on my daughter when my older daughter scored a goal. Jumping up, both my wedding ring and class ring went flying onto the field. We were lucky enough to find the band, but even hunting at night by flashlight failed to produce the missing class ring. That was three years ago, and you found it right where it was lost…".
Dan declined any finders fee as he was glad to have it back in the hands of it's owner (and to have potentially found some new friends in his hometown of Voorhees).
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November 3, 2001