Lost, Recovered, Returned: True Stories of Treasure Hunting in Hawaii

By Dutch Medford

Dutch Medford has been an avid treasure hunter since finding his first treasure, a one gallon Mason jar filled with silver dollar coins, when he was eight years old on a ranch in Texas.

Dutch and his wife, Pam, have lived in Hawaii for the last twenty-nine years and have been using underwater metal detectors to search for, find, and return to the rightful owners over $1,000,000 in lost jewelry and valuables.

These recoveries and returns are from underwater, off the beaches, and from inland. This couple have been lucky enough to help complete strangers by turning their tears of frustration and sadness into tears of joy and happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648014352

Book preview

How Things Are Lost in Hawaii

Both visitors and residents in Hawaii typically lose their rings in the water due to the temperature causing their fingers to immediately shrink up to one full ring size when they first enter the water. Add the natural slickness of the water, suntan lotion, the suction of the sand when they stick their hands into it while they are crawling hand over hand along the bottom, and you have a recipe for the loss of their rings.

Other ways jewelry is lost is by snagging the item on the exposed reef, on large exposed lava rocks, or broken pieces of coral lying on the bottom of the ocean and while digging holes in the sand on the beach. Other common ways of loss are while just swimming, bodysurfing, while wrestling with each other in the water or on the beach. Also, during volleyball games on the beach, rings, bracelets, and necklaces can be pulled off or flung off of lotion-covered hands and arms, landing several yards down the beach or when throwing balls to each other. A lot of necklaces and earrings can also be accidently snagged or pulled off and buried in the sand during these physical activities or simply putting on or pulling off snorkel masks and swim fins.

Quite a few swimmers have lost their rings when they exit the water, are walking up the beach toward their towels, they trip and fall onto the dry sand, which sticks to a wet body like glue and is very difficult to get off. Now, the combination of vigorously brushing the sand off their bodies and their wet shrunken fingers, their heavy rings can slip off their hands, bracelets off their wrists, and be thrown several yards away from where they are standing on the beach. Depending on how they are standing in proximity to the ocean, jewelry, sometimes, can be flung back out into the water or into nearby bushes.

That is why we search the beach first from just above where their towels were lying on the beach, down to where they entered/exited the water and if the item is not found, we search the water where they swam or snorkeled. In this scenario of brushing sand off a wet body, when we meet the person on the beach where the loss occurred, we always ask them to show us approximately where they were standing, which direction they were facing while brushing the sand off, and which hand the ring or bracelet was on. This gives us a line of sight direction to begin our initial grid search on the beach.

We Ask a Lot of Questions

When an item is lost in the water, we ask the owner to show us:

Where did you enter the water?

Did you stand up in the water close to the beach to put on or remove your snorkeling gear?

Did you sit down in the shallow water to put your swim gear on or remove it?

If so, did you lose your balance and stick your hands into the sand to help regain your balance?

Did you crawl across the sandy bottom hand over hand to enter or exit the water?

What is the approximate route you took while snorkeling?

Where were you when you realized the item was missing?

Getting the answers to these questions gives us the approximate width and length of our initial water grid search area (imaginary search box) along the route they took while swimming or snorkeling. Sometimes we are given a hand-drawn map like the sample of Poipu Beach Park, above (Map A) that are extremely helpful in locating the lost item.

If we don’t find the item in the area they have indicated, we expand our search further out by 10' increments in all directions around the perimeter of our original search area. Sometimes we are lucky enough that the owner of the lost item actually took note of a specific area underwater (i.e., rock formation, large crack in the reef, reference points on the beach such as a picnic table, fence, or shrubbery) that lines up to where they think the item was lost. This information really aids in narrowing down a search area; the metal detector’s search coil is only 9 1/2 to 12 in diameter, and that is a big ocean we are searching for a very small item.

This is not always the case but rather in their excitement of losing their item, they don’t stop to look for reference points out of the water or underwater. By the time they call us, they are usually back on the beach and cannot recall exactly where they were when the loss occurred. For these reasons, we sometimes do not find the lost item while the visitor is with us; but we may find it at a later time before being able to return it to them. We have actually searched for years for a lost item before finding it, tracking down the rightful owner and returning it to them.

When a lost item is not found immediately, we keep the contact information of the owner, a description of the item, the date/time of loss and a map of the loss area; this way we can locate the owner if/when, we find the item at a later date. Examples: We searched for one ring two days a week for five months before it was found and returned to the owner. Another time, we searched for eight years for a ring that had already been missing for two years before we began looking for it, finding it, and returning that item (both of these stories are included later in this book).

You have to become an amateur detective sometimes to trace the owner of a piece of jewelry down to return it to them. They may have relocated several times during the lapsed time from when the item was lost to when it is found and the attempt to return it.

We average 70 percent to 80 percent recovery/return rate since we started returning lost items from underwater to the owners over the past twenty-nine years. Those items we find that we haven’t been asked to search for are kept in our safety deposit box at the bank just in case at a future date, the owner should return to Kauai and contact us or be tracked down. This has happened to us several times over the years. You can see that part of our hobby is like becoming a detective having to research and investigate the history of our finds to return them.

We check with lifeguards, the police departments, and resort security departments when trying to trace owners of our finds. If there is an inscription on the inside of a ring or lost item that has a social security number, we contact the Social Security Department to inquire if they will help contact the person. We give our information to them, request that they contact the owner, and have them call us so we can return the item. The Social Security Department will not give out personal information to anyone but has, on occasion, helped us trace down an owner, and we are very grateful for their help.

Police departments follow the same rules except the added option of purchasing a copy of a lost property report which has all the owner’s contact information, a detailed description of the lost item, and information as to where/when it was lost. If the item is not found on our initial search, I recommend they contact the police department and make a lost property report for their insurance. If lifeguards have an owner’s information, they will, at our request, contact them and give them our information along with a request to call us.

The owners of recovered high school and college graduation rings can usually be tracked down through the school or college alumni that is usually indicated on the ring. Again, we request that they contact the owners and have them call us. Manufactures (i.e., Jostens and Tiffany) of graduation jewelry are also good sources to contact to track down owners of graduation jewelry.

Finding a piece of jewelry on the beach or in the water is always exciting, especially underwater due to everything appearing larger than it really is due to the natural magnification of the water. I have to tell you that when you center a target in the sand on the ocean floor, fan the sand off that target, and find yourself staring at a huge platinum or gold and diamond ring sparkling up at you from the bottom of the hole does amazing things for your heart rate, even if you don’t get to keep it.

You add all the change we find, plus the additional jewelry we find, the exercise of swinging the detector, and swimming in the water or walking on the beach while we search equals to great exercise and a great hobby that Pam and I have gladly shared with each other. This is along with the people we are able to help by finding and returning their precious items back to them that they thought were lost forever. This is one of the few hobbies that we are aware of that actually consistently pays you to do it.

Sometimes when we are searching in the water, we find paper money in various denominations lying on the bottom or moving back and forth on the bottom by the action of the waves. This is especially true now that the new currency has a metal strip implanted in the bill. When the bill gets wet, it sinks to the bottom and is moved along with the current and swells. I don’t know of any metal detector that will pick up that small metal strip in paper money, but it is great to find these by sight while we are searching in the ocean.

You may probably be wondering how paper money winds up on the bottom of the ocean. A lot of swimmers will put paper money and change in their swim trunk pockets after they have gone shopping before going to the beach. They sometimes forget the money is in their pocket when they go into the water. The money is washed out of their pockets, usually while they are swimming or in heavy waves while they are playing in the surf. Just the act of swimming will wash paper bills and coins out of a swimmer’s pockets, no matter where they are swimming, in the ocean, lakes, streams, and rivers in Hawaii or anywhere in the world.

How It All Got Started

In my younger years, I was raised on a farm and ranch in the Panhandle of Texas northeast of a little town named Dumas and grew accustomed to early morning chores, coming in at late hours at night, and with a lot of hard work in between. I was not accustomed to having a lot of money or luxury items in my life, just a lot of hard work.

One day when I was eight years old, my dad and I came back to the house for lunch. Dad sat down in his usual spot at the end of the table, anticipating enjoying the fried chicken lunch my mother had prepared for us. To my dad’s and my surprise, instead of mother setting the meal on the table, she walked up to Dad, grabbed the seat of his chair in her right hand, the back of his chair in her left hand, and turned him around so that she was facing him, looking him straight in the eyes.

In a very low but stern voice, she told him, If you want supper tonight or anything else, you will build me a 4' high picket fence around my yard today because I am tired of your cattle getting into my yard, tearing up my grass and eating my flowers! This was not a request but rather an ultimatum. Now I must say here that when most Texas women make this type of strong demand, they usually get what they ask for or want without question. Like the old saying goes, A happy wife means a happy life.

After lunch, Dad and I went out into the yard to measure, mark where all the posts for the fence were to be set and gates were to be placed. He handed me what is better known in that part of the country as a double knuckle buster clamshell post hole digger (aptly named due to the two heavy duty vertical wood handles above the blades being designed so close and fit so tight that your knuckles would always smash together with each downward plunge of the digger).

He told me to start sinking post holes while he drove into town to get all the lumber for the fence. He left me standing there by myself looking at a hard afternoon’s work. By this time, Mother had left to go visit my aunt Maggie who lived about three miles down the road from our home, so I was left alone to finish digging the holes.

I had dug four holes along the back edge of the yard. It was when I started the fifth hole that the post hole digger slammed to a sudden stop about 8 down in the hole. I tried again thinking I had struck a buried rock, the same thing happened again, but this time there was a hollow sound like I had hit a large empty container. Now the curiosity of an eight-year-old kid kicked in. I carefully removed the dirt off the top of whatever was buried there in the hole with my hands and discovered the top of a large green Mason jar" with a wire clip glinting back at me.

As I cleaned more dirt off the top of the jar, I could see through the glass lid and could see the jar was filled to the top with what looked like silver dollars. I got so excited that I started to tear at the dirt around the top of the jar with my hands again and finally had the first 4" of the jar top exposed. I tried loosening the jar by rocking it side to side, but it was too heavy to budge.

I was sitting there wondering how I was going to get this heavy Mason jar filled with coins out of that hole. It suddenly dawned on me to use the post hole digger to carefully dig an extra hole beside the jar, tip it over, and slide it out using both hands. Between the 95oF heat, no shade, and my excitement, I was sweating profusely, but I wasn’t about to stop trying to get this treasure out of the ground and hidden in my bedroom.

It only took about fifteen minutes more for me to dig the second hole and being able to lift the heavy coin-filled one gallon green Mason jar out of the hole. I could clearly see the silver dollars gleaming back at me, and I didn’t hesitate to pick up the heavy load and quickly take it into the house to hide it in my bedroom. This was "my" treasure, and I had already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to share this with anyone, especially, my dad!

I know that statement sounds awful, but my dad was known to be a tight wad and would not share anything of value with anyone, including his own family. I remembered that when I was six years old and we were on a driving trip from Texas to California to visit relatives, Dad and Mom had stopped off in Las Vegas for some quick gambling. Dad parked the car directly in front of the Golden Nugget Casino, lifted me out of the car, sat me down on the sidewalk, told me where I could go, and stressed where I couldn’t go.

He told me, You can walk from the end of this block to the opposite end of this block. He stressed this by pointing in both directions with his finger, then he told me, Under no circumstances are you to go inside any of the buildings! He and Mom both went inside and were gone for quite a long time.

Now a six-year-old farm boy in 1951 could pretty well entertain themselves without getting into too much mischief, most of the time. It was especially easy for me because I was used to being alone due to me being the only child in our family growing up on an isolated farm and ranch. I knew exactly what I could do and where I could go. I also knew that if I deviated from Dad’s instructions, my backside would suffer the consequences.

In those early days in Las Vegas, a few of the casinos had men standing out front by the entry door and, unknown to me at the time, would hand any child walking or being carried by a silver dollar; I guess this was to entice the parents into coming into the casino and gamble. So for the want of nothing else to do, I started walking from where our car was parked to one end of my designated block. In doing so, I had to walk past the first man standing in front of the entry door of the Golden Nugget.

Now, here is where this story gets really interesting! I was dressed in typical Texas kid attire: blue jeans, short-sleeved Western shirt, cowboy straw hat, and cowboy boots. As I started to walk past the man standing in the doorway, he smiled at me and said, Hay there, little cow poke, how are you doing today? At the same time, he reached down with his right hand and handed me a silver dollar.

I asked him, What is this for?

He told me that his job was to stand in the doorway and every time a kid went by, he had to give the kid a silver dollar. I thanked him, put the coin in my jeans pocket, and continued to walk down the street toward one of my designated corners.

At that time there were two more casinos in the direction I was walking past the Golden Nugget, and in the opposite direction, two more smaller ones on the other end of my designated walking area. Each of the casinos had a man standing in the doorway. When I reached the front door of the next casino, a second man standing next to the doorway handed me a silver dollar; I thanked him and walked on toward the end of the block. At the last casino, a third man handed me another silver dollar; I thanked him and walked on to the corner. I had reached the end of the block, looked up and down the sidewalks to see what was happening down them, then I turned around and walked back toward the opposite end of the block.

When I started to pass the front door of the first casino, the man standing there again handed me a silver dollar. I told him, Thank you, but you already gave me one and tried to hand it back to him.

He looked at me with a grin on his face and said, Now you wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you?

I told him, No, sir then he told me, My job is to stand here and pass out silver dollars to any kid that passes by me, and if I don’t do this, I’ll get fired. So no matter how many times you go by me, I have to give you a silver dollar.

I thanked him again, accepted the coin, put it into my pants pocket, and walked on to see if I would be given a coin at each of the other casinos along this block. If this happened, even a six-year-old could figure out that could mean a bunch of free coins in a short time just for walking by.

Sure enough, as I walked past each man standing in the doorways of each casino, I was handed another silver dollar. Needless to say, and for the want of nothing else to do, I just kept walking back and forth while I waited for my parents. In a short time, I had my shirt pockets and all of my front and back jean pockets stuffed with silver dollars. I even started putting them in my boots and under my hat; being I was only 4' tall at the time, I could hardly walk due to the heavy weight of the coins I was carrying. By the time Mom and Dad came out of the casino, I was sitting on the running board of the car, resting.

Dad must have not done so well with his gambling for him to be so angry when he came out of the casino; Dad had a mad look on his face and spat out to me, Get in the car!

I stood up. He opened the car door, grabbed me under both arms, started to pick me up to put me in the car, and came to a sudden stop when he felt how heavy I was. He didn’t say a thing, just picked me up, and put me in the back seat of the car; he and Mom got in and we drove off.

He pulled the car over on the shoulder of the road a short distance down the street, shut the engine off, turned around to face me, and asked, How come you’re so heavy? What is in your pockets? After telling him and Mom what had happened to me while they were inside the casino and both having shocked looks on their faces, Dad made me empty all the coins out of my pockets, from under my hat, and out of my boots. He put all of the silver dollars in a paper grocery bag, rolled the top of the bag closed, set the bag near his feet in front of his seat, and we drove off to finish our trip to California.

Now as time went by, I realized that I never got to keep any of those silver dollars that I had been given and worked so hard for; I was never told the total number of coins or their value. With that said, now you know why I wasn’t about to share any of my newly found treasure with that man. In fact, I never told my mom about finding the Mason jar filled with silver dollars until after I was forty-five years old; I never told my dad anything about my treasure.

I did tell my mother the story of how I found the coins, but I don’t think she really believed me. But for a short time, I was the richest kid in our local area, and over the next two years, I spent all the coins on things I wanted until they were all gone. For me, that was the start of catching the treasure hunting bug. I have been a diehard treasure hunter ever since.

My First Time Visiting Kauai

While serving in the US Navy between April 1964 through April 1968, I was stationed on the USS Calvert (APA-32) home ported in San Diego, California. I was an assault craft coxswain and ran river support and river patrols using Amphibious Landing Craft for two tours in Vietnam and then on the USS Valley Forge (LPH-8 ) as a radar man for another third tour before being sent back to the mainland to be discharged at the naval base on Treasure Island in San Francisco, California.

It was on one of my basket leaves from Vietnam that instead of going back home, I went to O’ahu, Hawaii, instead. When I first got there, I did the typical serviceman’s routine: go to the beach, drink a lot of beer, eat a lot of fresh vegetables, fruit, drink a lot of fresh milk, and chase women. This, by the way, gets to be quite boring really fast when you don’t know anyone at all and don’t have a car to get around. About the fourth day, I got really fed up with my routine and decided to go to the airport and fly to another island just for grins and giggles.

I took a cab to Hawaiian Airlines at the Honolulu Airport, approached the ticket counter, and told the attendant that I wanted a plane ticket on the next plane going out to any of the other islands; I didn’t care which one as long as it was off O’ahu. I was told the next plane was bound for Kauai and was scheduled to depart within the hour. I bought a one-way ticket even though at the time, I did not know where Kauai was in relation to O’ahu or along the island chain. I didn’t care which island; I just wanted a change.

The flight itself was short and uneventful. We took off, turned away from Oahu heading northwest, climbed to altitude, leveled off, flew for a short time, and then started the descent into Kauai. I was setting in a window seat on the left side of the plane, and when Kauai came into view, I was awestruck by one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen in my life.

The island was a vivid green everywhere you looked with steep majestic mountains, widespread red dirt, plowed sugarcane farmland, green sugarcane fields that stretched as far as you could see, and this beautiful island was surrounded by the deep indigo blue Pacific Ocean. This changed to a light turquoise color over the shallower reefs, and where the sea met the island was ringed with white foamy waves that crashed along and into the cliffs or rolled up on to the white sandy beaches. The sight of Kauai and the ocean as we came into land was breathtaking.

Lihue Airport had been built along the eastside of Kauai, just outside of Lihue on the outer edge of the 10' to 12' high sugarcane fields and had a one-building terminal. The plane taxied up to the terminal, parked, shut down the engines, the passengers disembarked down the mobile gangway, and had to walk across the tarmac a short distance to enter the terminal. When I stepped off the plane, I was hit immediately with the high humidity and the fragrant trade winds that were mixed with the smell of flowers and aviation fuel.

I had walked about ten yards toward the terminal when I suddenly stopped, took in a long deep breath, and suddenly had the strangest feeling I have ever had in my life—the feeling of coming back home instead of visiting a place for the first time. I stood there long enough that one of the grounds crew came over and asked me if I was all right. I told him, All right? I am home! He just smiled at me and walked away.

I only spent four days on Kauai before I had to return to O’ahu and eventually back to my ship and Vietnam. The day I flew out of O’ahu and was heading back to country (Vietnam), my head was filled with all kinds of reasons not to go back but instead, to go back and stay on Kauai. I had already made up my mind that I would someday move to and live on Kauai. Little did I know how much time that would take and how much life I would have to live before that dream would finally come true.

Pam

Fast-forward quite a few years, I was working as a security officer at the Museum of Natural History in Denver, Colorado. In the spring, summer, and part of the fall, most of the staff of the museum would get together to play volleyball after work almost every day, Monday through Friday; most departments were closed on the weekends. We all had fun, and it was a way to let off some steam if you needed to. Most of the time it included laughter, a lot of teasing and competitive remarks from those few that took the game just a little too seriously; the rest of us just had fun playing and bantering with one another across the net.

These games gave the staff a little break each day and the opportunity to do some non-museum-related visiting. As one would not be surprised to discover, after several months of playing these after-work games, some of the staff went from just being coworkers and friends to paring off as couples and later on, the pairing of a few couples blossomed into full-blown weddings.

At the time, I had just gone through a bitter failed marriage of twelve years, and believe me, I was so discouraged about the whole mess that I was not looking for nor wanted to get involved with another woman anytime soon. The fact of the matter at that time, my thinking was that I would never get married again, or so I had convinced myself. Then I met Pamela Owens, and this young lady turned my world and my misguided thinking totally around.

In the beginning it was just fun to be around her at the volleyball games; occasionally we would run into each other in my duty rounds at the museum and even rarely at a few of the evening social gatherings or museum functions that