Early one Sunday morning, a metal detector hobbyist from Massachusetts traveled to New Hampshire to help find a stranger’s lost wedding ring. And he located it—just a day after it went missing—but that’s not all.
The Good Samaritan then embarked on another miles-long trip to gift it back to the owner, who lives in Shushan, New York.
Arthur Fleming, a 64-year-old electrician from Pepperell, Massachusetts, has been metal detecting since 1990 and has helped several people find their lost items. He says there’s “nothing special” in all he’s done to find the woman’s wedding ring.
“I go metal detecting for fun. That’s my hobby,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s just fun to find a ring for somebody, or keys in a blizzard, and getting this stuff back.”
Losing the Ring
Dental assistant Kelsey Battease, 28, lost her ring on Aug. 10, while she was vacationing at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire with her children and mother-in-law.She was holding her 2-year-old son’s hand as they walked on the beach around noon. Enjoying their stroll, she switched hands—and in that fleeting moment, her wedding ring slid off her finger and fell into the waves. The moment was sickening for Battease.
“My stomach and my heart fell out of my body,” she told The Epoch Times.
Although she spent about 30 to 40 minutes looking for the ring, she said she had “no hope” of finding it because of the way the water was coming in.
“There were a lot of people jumping at the chance to come and look for it with their metal detectors,” Battease said.
“I had a man ask, like, what time I had lost it. And he knew, based on the time and the tide coming in, where to look for it.”
It was none other than Fleming.
A Gift of Kindness
After seeing the post, Fleming asked Battease and her mother some questions before making the nearly one-hour drive to the beach the next day, on Aug. 11.“I got up there around seven o’clock just to make sure I [could] get a parking spot,” he said, speaking to The Epoch Times. “We didn’t actually go out there and start looking until roughly eight o’clock.”
His search took about four hours. He focused on the small section of the beach where Battease said she had lost the ring. The work wasn’t easy. That morning, his waterproof scuba-dive-capable detector found only a pair of sunglasses, a quarter, a penny, and two pull tabs—but no wedding ring.
Finally, at around noon, all worn out and hungry, Fleming decided to call it quits. Little did he know he was in for a big surprise.
Standing knee-deep in water, his metal detector suddenly began beeping and when he fished out the item, it turned out to be the ring; he recognized it from the photo he had seen on Facebook.
“When I saw it in my scoop, I knew that was the ring. I knew I'd found it,” he said.
‘There Are Still Good People in the World’
Fleming texted Battease that he had found the ring and asked if she was close enough to pick it up. And to avoid Battease’s family thinking he was a scammer, he also attached a photo of the ring.They texted him back, saying they lived in upstate New York.
“They were only down [at Hampton Beach] for a day trip,” he said.
A busy mom of three, Battease had difficulty finding the time to meet with Fleming to retrieve her ring. Eventually, on Aug. 23, they met halfway.
“We had hoped that we'd be able to meet halfway at Brattleboro, Vermont, which was like 90 minutes for them [and] 90 minutes for us,” Fleming said. “She was very happy and elated.”
Indeed she was.
Battease said, “I felt so grateful, and I’m just speechless at how kind and thoughtful he was to go and take his time and to go and look for it, and then, to bring it all the way up to where I live.”
Despite the distance separating the two newfound friends, they continue to stay in touch and hope to meet again one day soon.
Battease is glad that Fleming is getting the recognition he deserves for the kind act. Through her story, she says, she wants to let everybody know “there are still good people in the world.”
