On a sunny July Fourth weekend at Lake Dunmore, with his family running around “pretending to be sharks,” David Miles noticed an odd sensation — his wedding ring was no longer on his finger.
Miles, a Montpelier resident, was about to celebrate his 46th wedding anniversary, and he rarely, if ever, removed his ring. He didn’t think it had been very long since it had slipped off his finger. Yet the prospect of finding it in the lake, which was full of swimmers, was daunting.
After hours of digging around, Miles called off the search. As they were leaving, his daughter started a Google search.
Enter Mike Baker, a professional ring finder.
A family member called him immediately, and Baker assured Miles he would find the ring for him. He was right: They met the next morning, and two hours later Baker fished the ring from 3 feet of water and an inch of silt and pebbles.
He’s done it hundreds of times over 15 years, venturing up mountains, into deep rapids and across state lines to turn up lost rings, jewelry, keys and other types of the most financially and emotionally valuable things humans own.
Baker, a Barre resident, isn’t in it for the money. Half the reward money that people give him goes to his charity of choice, the Central Vermont Humane Society. He chose the local rescue organization because he has friends who work there and has adopted a few dogs from them over the years. He now has two dogs, Minnie and Brody.
But he’s never set a specific rate for his efforts, because he wants to help everyone, regardless of their financial circumstances.
“Even if they’re looking for a tractor part, something that’s not very expensive, but it’s very important, and they don’t have much money, it’s all part of it,” he said.
“Like a journalist or a detective”
Baker demonstrated his search technique to VTDigger on a July morning in Hubbard Park, in his former hometown of Montpelier. He swung his metal detector in smooth, methodical passes back and forth, keeping an eye on the detector’s readings to distinguish precious metals from scrap metal and trash.
Baker first bought a metal detector secondhand 15 years ago. At first he used it for nothing more than exploring his own property and the local forest.
Once he’d “really been bitten by the bug,” he began watching YouTube videos from fellow metal detectorists. One of those YouTubers was Chris Turner, the founder of The Ring Finder, where hundreds of finder specialists around the world advertise their services.
Baker is now one of three ring finders in the directory, including a recent addition, Amos Martin, who now covers most Champlain Valley calls. Baker has worked with him on a find before.
“You got to ask a lot of questions, like a journalist or a detective,” Baker said.
One of Baker’s proudest finds was for a widow who kept her husband’s ring on her thumb. When she lost it, she believed she’d flushed it down the toilet, prompting her children to comb through the septic system. It wasn’t there.
By the time they called in Baker, the widow was in danger of losing her house to a tax sale, putting a looming deadline on the hunt.
He spent five or six hours on a Saturday searching all around the area where the septic tank had gone to nature, finding sheet metal, toys and other old items, but no ring. He returned again the following Saturday and had spent another four hours searching when he thought to check near a clothesline where the woman might have chosen to hang her clothes.
Buried 4 inches into the dirt was a thin, bent piece of metal, he said.
“When I went into her kitchen, she turned, I held out my hand and I said, ‘Is that your husband’s ring?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, it is.’ And she turned white as a sheet,” he said. “It was just like her husband was part of that ring.”
“There it was”
Along with hours of labor, Baker’s efforts often require him to brave less-than-ideal conditions out in nature, from searching through the rapids of the Hudson River to digging around in poison ivy.
And then there’s snow. He once received a call from a woman who had lost a rare vintage watch, worth tens of thousands of dollars, at the Okemo ski area in Ludlow. Okemo had received a foot of fresh snow the day she lost it, he said.
“As soon as the spring started melting the snow, I went back down,” he said. On his third trip, he was in the parking lot which still had 8 or 9 inches of snow that had been plowed in the parking lot.
Bingo. “There it was,” he said, bringing a reward that made it his “best year ever” for donations to the humane society.
After the Lake Dunmore episode, Miles brought Baker a rhubarb coffee cake alongside the reward money when he went to see him the following week. The two ended up chatting about their overlapping friends and places they’ve been.
“Just a great guy, and really a happy ending to a ring that just spent an overnight in Lake Dunmore,” Miles said.
