Laura Allore will never forget the dreadful mix of feelings that poured over her as she sat on a windswept Lake Michigan beach.

Allore, 38, was with her friend Jenna at Platte River Point on July 16. After several days of camping with the family, the two were enjoying a rare girls’ day. It was particularly breezy, with large waves crashing along the sandy shore.

“We hung out on the beach for a bit and read our books, and then we decided to go swimming,” said Allore, a Traverse City native who works at Seven Monks. “We were jumping and playing in the waves like little children – it was so much fun.”

After their dip, they returned to the beach to lay on their towels and read.

“I was laying there reading my book and Jenna was sitting in her chair, and I saw her twisting her ring on her finger," Allore says. "I’ve always loved her ring, and I was looking at it and admiring how beautiful it is."

Suddenly, the worst feeling imaginable. Allore realized her own ring was gone, and she knew right away how she lost it.

“(Before we swam), I put the ring in my bathing suit top while I put sunscreen on because I hate that feeling of sunscreen being all over my ring,” she says. “Usually I’d put it on my towel or someplace else, but I put it in my top, rinsed my hands in the water and completely forgot I ever put it there.”

Her most prized possession, something with her every day for 14 years, was now out there somewhere. Right off the bat, recovery seemed virtually impossible. Too much water. Too much shifting sand. Not nearly enough visibility.

“I just started crying. I knew it had come out in the water because we were playing in the waves, and I thought there was no way we would ever find it,” Allore says. “Jenna took one of her rings off under the water and set it down to see (what it would look like), and she almost instantly lost it in the sand. So I knew we wouldn’t see it. It was probably buried already.”

After a few goggle-clad hours of frantically searching in the water, assisted by several kind-hearted onlookers, the pair had no choice but to give up. They went back to the campsite for the evening, but Allore couldn’t sleep a wink.

“It sounds so silly to say, but I felt like I was grieving,” she says. “It was all I could think about, and I just felt so sad. And I felt guilty, because it was my only expensive piece of jewelry, and my husband had spent all this money on it.”

Enter the hero

Even though she knew it was a long shot, Allore posted about the lost ring on her Facebook page. It couldn’t hurt, she figured. The post was shared on various social media groups, and it was not long after that she got a message from fellow Traverse City native David Coates.

As it turns out, Coates, 74, is an expert in finding lost rings. The retired TCAPS building manager first picked up a knack for finding things while stationed in Germany in the 1970s.

“I was stationed at a missile base, and the surrounding woods still had a lot of live munitions,” he said. “So I got to looking with a metal detector, finding all of that sort of stuff.”

Once he returned to the states, he kept up his metal detecting habit. While TCAPS was his full-time gig, he poured countless hours into ring searches as word spread about his ability to find lost jewelry. A local rental company, for instance, started regularly referring people who came to rent metal detectors to find their lost items directly to Coates.

All told, he estimates he’s found at least 300 lost rings over the decades.

“Laura’s story is so familiar. They’re all basically the same, with a few different twists,” he says. “Sometimes it’s gone for a while, and they don’t know for sure where they lost it. That means a pretty wide-open (search).”

Luckily for all involved, Allore was able to give Coates a detailed description of where she was, complete with an image from Google Maps.

“The first thing I was hoping was that it wasn’t in the water,” Coates says. “Lake Michigan is pretty unforgiving. Those big waves bury stuff and move the sand a lot, so I was really hoping it was up on the beach.”

Coates first searched on Sunday the 21st, five days after Allore lost the ring. He searched all the sand in the target area that day, probably a few thousand square feet of it. But he came up empty.

“You really have to cross each inch, because if you miss even one inch, it could have the ring, and you did all of that work for nothing,” he says.

Coates went back the next day and searched in the water this time.

“I did the shoreline, I did the troughs, then I worked every bit of that out to shoulder deep, but I didn’t find it,” he says. “I was getting kind of discouraged now, so I told her to talk to her buddy she was with to see if they had any other ideas.”

As it turns out, Jenna did have something. A picture that directed the search ever so slightly down the beach.

Treasure found

The next day – a week after the ring was lost – was pouring rain and especially wavy. Coates was in waist deep water, with waves splashing up to his chin and rain dousing what the waves hadn't already soaked. 

“Back and forth, back and forth,” he says. “All that searching, and I just got one beep.”

Later that evening, Allore got a text from Coates. He said that he did his best, and that despite all of his searching, he got only one beep. Allore put her phone down, discouraged. She didn’t see the follow up text until a while later.

“He said, ‘I forgot to send you a picture of the one beep I got,’ and it was a picture of my ring in his hands,” Allore says.

Then, another wave of emotion.

“I just freaked out. I was crying, I was laughing. I don’t know. It was such cool, crazy feeling,” Allore said. “So I basically didn’t sleep again, because I was so revved up. I was happy and hyper.”

Coates didn’t charge Allore a search fee. He never does. It all works out, as almost everyone gives him a nice tip (Allore did). She’s still in awe of – and in endless thanks for – his efforts. The whole experience was a "reminder that there are good people out there," she says.

“I thought he was just going to do the one day. I told him I appreciated that, and he told me he was coming back tomorrow," she says. "And then after the second day, I definitely thought he’d be done.”

Luckily for Allore, Coates is like a dog with a bone.

“I get stubborn,” he says.

For his part, Coates gets his own endless joy out of delivering happy endings.

“I’ve had lot of rings that I've returned to people and they instantly start crying and stuff, so you know how much it meant to them,” he says. “I just like to unbreak the heartbreak.”

Editor's note: Metal detecting is not allowed in Sleeping Bear Dunes, but Coates has a special permit.