The winter of 2002/2003 was pretty mild. I took advantage of being unemployed by going metal detecting at one of my favorite spots once a week. This particular place is an old campground and picnic area in the local mountains. I had been doing pretty good this season, adding a 1910-S penny in good condition and a 1906-D Barber dime in fine condition to my collection. Additionally, I had found numerous other wheatbacks and a few Merc dimes.

I was beeping in the general area of where I'd made several good finds previously, including the big gold monogram ring. Here's the site. Click on the panorama for a full-sized popup.

I normally hunt up here using notch discriminate mode because of the abundance of aluminum trash. The result of hunting in notch mode is that many, perhaps most, gold rings are screened out. That's the price I pay for not making my old bones dig constantly. Every once in a while though, a ring that's big enough to register good finds its way beneath my coil. This was one of those days. I got a beep that was good, or at least good enough, and I kneeled down to recover the target. Much to my surprise, about 2 - 3" down I caught the glimmer of gold. I popped the target out and it was a large, man's class ring. The bottom part of it was broken, but the break was clean and easily repairable. This ring was from Mt. Miguel High School, Class of 1961. The initials on it read "TC". The ring had been buried, I surmised, around 40 years. I wrapped it in a napkin and put it in my pocket. After I washed it off, it looked good as new.

I intended to try to find the owner, but since he'd been missing it for 40 years already, I took my time. Eventually, I found the school's website and it had a link to the principal on it. I e-mailed the principal, who gave me a phone number for the Class of 61's contact, Kay Stamper. Two or three weeks later, I got around to calling Kay. She immediately looked up who TC might have been and in less than a minute, said, "that has to be Tom Carmany, that's the only male TC we have. I was just communicating with him recently and have an e-mail address for him." She gave me Tom's e-mail and we swapped a few e-mails. Needless to say, he was quite surprised and happy to get his old ring back. I sent it to him via UPS. The whole thing was pretty cool.

I had found one other class ring, a ladies ring, Class of 1951, in the same campground, but rather than having a stone, the logo appeared to have been metal and was missing. Despite looking in the hole and nearby, even going to all metal mode, I never could find out where it was from. Being able to find the owner this time was a good reward for all the hours I spend up there swinging my stick.

As an epilogue to this story, in 2006, this campground was totally renovated with new flush toilets and other amenities. Part of the construction involved major disturbances in the area in which I found the ring. If I hadn't come up with it when I did, it likely would have never been found.