Andrea Bielecki was slamming some last-minute flowers into her front garden this summer when she slipped her wedding band and 1.5-carat diamond engagement ring into her bra so she wouldn’t lose them.
Company was coming, she had an eye on her toddler and it was only for a minute.
Then her daughter ran into the neighbour’s yard and Bielecki had to chase her, her mom arrived with groceries to be unloaded, Bielecki swept up some leaves in the backyard and suddenly it was bedtime.
Her wedding ring tumbled out of her clothes. Her engagement ring did not.
Armed with flashlights, Bielecki, her husband and her mother combed the front yard until 1 a.m.
Bielecki was distraught. Her husband had designed the ring and proposed to her with it in a cabin in Algonquin Park in 2006.
At work the next day, her colleagues suggested she rent a metal detector, but her Google search led her to Mark Ellis, a private investigator turned ring finder.
Twenty minutes after he arrived with his metal detector and kind concern, he found her ring on the front lawn, in a spot Bielecki had searched a dozen times. It was buried upside-down in the grass.
“I burst into tears. I was in shock,” says Bielecki, 33.
Ellis, 42, has spent most of his career as a private eye, investigating insurance fraud and slip-and-fall claims.
It’s gruelling work and when he was younger he loved it. He climbed trees, jumped fences, spent hours in a van in the heat of summer and bitter cold of winter, catching professional claimants on video. Once he caught someone who claimed to be disabled doing flips off a pool’s diving board.
“We make really good money, but it’s really for a young single guy,” says Ellis, who is married.
He loves mystery — he is a professional magician — and he loves the thrill of the hunt. But he wanted to do something that made people happy, not furious.
As a child, he’d been fascinated by the potential of metal detectors, but gave up in frustration after coming up with only bottle caps and nails.
He picked it up again at 21, and after long practice, became adept at distinguishing the slight differences in sound the detector makes when it locates rings and coins. His first big find was a 14-karat gold men’s wedding band on a baseball diamond in Toronto.
“Once you find a big item, you’re hooked, you’re always looking for the next big thing,” says Ellis.
It became his passion and now it’s his job. He’s set up shop at emds.ca — Ellis Metal Detecting Service. He will search for any metal object, from property markers to buried oil tanks. The cost varies, depending on the job.
“If it’s metal, I’ll find it,” says Ellis.
His treasured finds over the years include an enamelled Roman button and a hand-hammered silver coin from 1199 from a farmer’s field in Winchester, England.
Once he found a set of gold dentures he melted down for cash. He invests most of his cash in his equipment. He has three water metal detectors, seven land metal detectors, and sleuthing gear that can detect whether a stone from a fireplace has been removed, or if something in a house has been repainted or plastered over.
Rings seem to be the most commonly lost treasure. They tend to slip off in the cold, in the water, or when people lose weight — as little as five pounds.
They’re his favourite, to search and to find.
“Somebody’s heartbroken when they lose a wedding band. It doesn’t matter if they spent $30 on it and it’s all banged up,” he says.
“I drive home on a cloud.”
http://liarcatchers.com/asset_investigations.html
