A Massachusetts woman lost her diamond ring in the ocean, and when Marshfield resident Lou Asci heard about it, he knew he had to help.
WATD’s Lenny Rowe has the details:
“That’s something that a person wants back, and it means more than just money. You want to get that back to that person,” said Asci. “I have the ability to do that, with things that my kids gave me, and to help them out. If I have that ability, then I’m going to do it.”
Walking by a store in Rockland, his children bought his first metal detector as a Father’s Day gift. He’s been hooked ever since.
He was actually in the process of looking for a different ring, when a friend, Michael Chorzewski, let him know about Francesca Teal’s story.
She posted on a New Hampshire social media page about losing her ring in the water at North Beach in Hampton.
Asci looked up tide charts, and got his metal detector ready.
“I went up to New Hampshire to visit my son, he recently bought a house up there. My wife and I decided to go over to Hampton Beach. We slept in the car for a little bit, and waited for low tide – low tide was at 4:20 a.m.,” said Asci. “Woke up at 2 a.m., put on the wetsuit, put on the headlamp, and started along the shore, working my way out into the water.”
After three days of searching, he was about to give up. It was getting late, in waist-deep water, and he finally found it.
He texted Teal, and she said he found the ring that once belonged to her great-grandmother.
“They actually went out and bought an underwater metal detector, just for the purpose of looking for it. As her reward, they gave that to me,” said Asci. “When I brought her the ring, she gave me the metal detector, that’s something I’ve wanted to have for a while, and I never could justify myself buying.”
He said it was a touching moment when Teal’s husband, Austin, dropped to a knee and presented her with the once-lost ring.
Asci says he’s found rare coins from the 1600s, but this was not the first ring he’s found in the dark. A couple of years ago, he was helping a woman find a ring near Foster Ave in Marshfield.
“She lost her wedding ring, it was a big elaborate ring, it had a family diamond that was in her family for almost 100 years or so, it had a couple other rings that were soldered together, a lot of diamonds all over it,” said Asci. “She lost it in the water, and it took me over a month to find it.”
He went back nearly every low tide, and went back to the same area. He got signals from the metal detector, but only found pull tabs and beer cans. He went to the same spot, and got a hit from the detector.
“I dug it up, and the diamonds were flashing back in my headlamp, this was ten minutes before midnight,” said Asci. “They were flashing back at me like police sirens. I figured, ‘it’s over.’ That’s where that term came from – please tell me this is the ring so I can finally get off this beach.”
Asci says he’s in the process of helping two more people search for rings along the South Shore.
(Cover photo via Lou Asci on Facebook).
