Scavenging

Beachcombing Soldier Brings Joy

Using a metal detector to find his own lost engagement ring, an Iraq War vet found much more — so now he’s a hero in more ways than one.

Luke Carter’s fiancée gave him the ring before he began his tour of duty. Having lost the ring somewhere on Australia’s Golden Beach, he recruited an “expert metal-detector operator” to undergo a “massive search,” according to the Sunshine Coast Daily. When this search was first covered in the Daily, the story mentioned that along with his own ring, Carter had found a few other “bits and bobs” in the sand that day. Reading that report, “Camille Wysling’s parents Trish and Neil wondered if their daughter’s Sweet 16 ring was among” those bits and bobs. The Brisbane college student was distraught, having lost the beloved ring her parents had given her but which had vanished one fateful day, months before, in the waves.

“After Cyclone Hamish, Camille resigned herself to the possibility her treasure was lost forever. Until Luke Carter came along.”

The Wyslings telephoned Carter, “described the ring with its three little stones” and asked if he had found anything like it.

He had. Camille will collect it this weekend.

Her family is “over the moon” because “it was such a long shot.”