Ring Finders of Maine
- Brick + Tides
- 3 days ago
- 9 min read
Meet Dennis Boothby and Gary Hill of Ring Finders of Maine
By 6:30 Tuesday evening, heavy fog had swallowed most of Ocean Park Beach. The horizon was gone. The ocean was barely visible beyond the wet sand, and a light rain had begun to fall.
Through the fog, two men wearing headphones moved slowly along the beach, swinging Minelab Manticore metal detectors from side to side. Gary Hill, of Hollis, wore red. Dennis Boothby, of Saco, wore blue. Every few minutes, one of them stopped to investigate beneath the sand.
The equipment in their hands cost thousands of dollars. Their searches sometimes begin at three in the morning. They have followed tides, walked through woods and searched inside barns for people they had never met.
Neither man charges for his time, only their expenses.
They look for telephones, keys, jewelry and wedding bands, but the objects are rarely as ordinary as they sound. A ring may represent decades of marriage. A necklace may be connected to someone who is no longer alive. Even an inexpensive piece of jewelry can hold a memory that cannot be replaced.
Boothby and Hill are two of the men behind Ring Finders of Maine, a Facebook community Boothby started that has grown to about 11,000 members.
They search for metal. What they return is often something much greater.
How Ring Finders of Maine Began
Boothby’s introduction to metal detecting was almost accidental.
In 2001, he bought a detector for his daughter’s 10th birthday. Like many gifts purchased for children, it did not remain exclusively in the child’s hands for long. Boothby became interested in what might be hidden beneath the ground, and soon he was learning how different metals sounded through a pair of headphones.
At the time, he worked overnight shifts. That unusual schedule gave him the opportunity to search Maine beaches when most people were asleep. He began planning trips around the tides, sometimes arriving during the early-morning darkness to explore newly exposed sand before the beaches became crowded.
Years later, Boothby introduced Hill to the hobby.
The two already knew each other from Nichols Portland, where Hill had been Boothby’s supervisor. When Hill retired around 2014, and coworkers wanted to know what he wanted for a gift, he asked for money toward a metal detector.
It proved to be a good investment.
Hill, who grew up in Hollis and graduated from Bonny Eagle High School in 1972, became just as interested in detecting as Boothby. Their former workplace relationship gradually became a friendship built around early mornings, changing tides and the possibility that the next signal might lead to something important.
Boothby eventually created Ring Finders of Maine and also joined The Ring Finders, an international directory connecting people who have lost valuables with experienced metal detectorists.
Boothby credits Sean Kelly of Rockport, whom he met while they were both searching for a lost piece of jewelry at Ocean Park in 2019, with introducing him to The Ring Finders.
The Facebook group opened the idea to an entire community. Someone could post about a lost ring in southern Maine, and a person with the right equipment might be close enough to help. What began with one detector purchased for a 10-year-old became a network of thousands.
A Necklace Returned After 18 Years
Of all the objects Boothby has found, one discovery stayed with him for nearly two decades.
In 2006, while detecting in Old Orchard Beach, he uncovered a gold chain carrying a jade Buddha and a small heart. Without knowing who owned it, the necklace might have looked like another interesting beach find.
The necklace remained in Boothby’s care as years passed. He did not sell it, discard it or forget the possibility that it might one day find its way home.
Eighteen years after finding it, and seeing a Facebook post about it, Boothby traveled to Worcester, Massachusetts, and personally surprised its owner with the necklace.
Boothby learned that the small heart had been given to the owner by a young woman who died in a car
accident only months after the necklace disappeared. Its importance had little to do with gold or jade. It was a physical connection to someone the owner had lost.
The return represents everything that separates ring finding from ordinary treasure hunting. A valuable object can be replaced with enough money. The little heart could not be replaced at any price.
Boothby had preserved more than a necklace. For 18 years, he had unknowingly protected someone else’s memory.
Finding a Wedding Ring Lost for 25 Years
Hill’s recoveries carry their own remarkable stories. One request brought him to a home where a wedding ring had been missing for approximately 25 years.
During an argument, the ring had been thrown into the woods. The decision was regretted almost immediately, but the jewelry could not be found.
Years became decades. Vegetation grew, seasons changed and the precise location became less certain. Then, as the couple prepared to sell the property, the missing ring returned to their thoughts. It was still somewhere outside, waiting beneath leaves, soil and years of accumulated growth.
Hill searched the area and found it.
The ring had spent a quarter-century in the woods, but it was recovered before the couple left the home behind. Something thrown away during one painful moment was returned as part of a much longer marriage.
It is easy to describe that as finding a piece of metal. It is harder to measure what it meant to place that ring back into the owners’ hands.
Ring Finding in Maine Takes Patience
Not every search happens on an open beach.
Hill once found himself searching around cow stanchions inside a barn for a ring that had disappeared into hay. A standard search coil covered more ground, but the surrounding metal made it difficult to isolate the right signal.
The solution was to change equipment.
Using a smaller coil allowed Hill to search more precisely around the stanchions. Somewhere among the hay, conflicting signals and farm equipment, he found the ring.
It was the metal-detecting version of searching for a needle in a haystack—except the needle was a ring, and every piece of nearby metal was competing for his attention.
Success depends on understanding more than the machine. Boothby and Hill consider where a person was standing, how an object was lost, how far it may have traveled and what has happened to the area since. On a beach, tides can move sand and bury an object beyond the reach of ordinary equipment. In the woods, leaves and vegetation can disguise the original terrain. Inside a barn, nails, tools and machinery can produce a chorus of unwanted signals.
The person who lost the object may also be mistaken about its location. Stress can distort memory, especially when someone realizes a wedding ring has vanished.
The detector narrows the possibilities. Patience completes the search.
Different Metal-Detecting Techniques
On Ocean Park Beach, the differences between Boothby and Hill were easy to see.
Boothby used a larger 15-inch coil, allowing him to cover more sand and potentially reach deeper objects. Hill generally preferred an 11-inch coil, which is lighter and easier to control.
Boothby kept his coil extremely close to the ground, sometimes brushing it along the sand to gain every possible bit of depth. Hill held his detector slightly higher.
The difference produced the kind of disagreement that can only happen between two longtime friends.
“He’s wrong. I’m right,” Boothby joked.
Boothby has operated a detector with his left hand since taking up the hobby 25 years ago. He lost his right arm in a laundromat accident at Camp Lejeune when he was just four years old.
“It literally ripped my arm off,” he said. “I ran home without it.”
It is a startling detail, but Boothby does not present it as the defining fact of his life. On the beach, he moves naturally, steadily sweeping the heavy detector while carrying the rest of his equipment. He has developed a technique that works for him—and he is confident enough in it to tell Hill exactly what he is doing wrong.
Their friendly teasing is part of what makes the partnership work. They compare equipment, debate technique and share the satisfaction of finding something that another person had given up hope of seeing again.
The Search for a Ring Lost in Ogunquit
The search for lost jewelry continues even as Boothby and Hill tell stories about the objects they have already returned.
Tomorrow morning, July 29th, they plan to travel to Ogunquit to search for a sentimental gold peridot ring. The ring belongs to a tourist visiting Maine from British Columbia and has been missing since July 11.
Before arriving with their detectors, Boothby and Hill try to reconstruct exactly what happened. They ask where the person entered the beach, where they placed their belongings, where they went into the water and approximately when the ring disappeared. Those details help them map the most likely search areas before they begin walking the sand.
Timing matters just as much as location. The ring was lost approximately an hour and a half before low tide, but the tide on July 29 is expected to recede farther than it had on the day the ring disappeared. That could expose an area that had previously remained underwater.
“Gary and I are going to go down tomorrow morning because the tide is going to be much lower than it was the day she lost it,” Boothby said.
If their reconstruction is accurate, the lower tide should reveal the section of beach where the tourist was standing when they lost the ring. There are no guarantees. Another beachgoer may have already found it, or nearly three weeks of waves and shifting sand may have carried it elsewhere or buried it beyond the detector’s reach.
Still, Boothby believes they have a good chance.
That is how many of their searches begin: with a stranger’s message, a few remembered details and a location that must be translated into a map. Then they study the tides, choose their equipment and arrive when the ocean gives them the best opportunity.
By the time most tourists begin filling Ogunquit Beach Wednesday morning, Boothby and Hill may already be out there—headphones on, detectors moving and another person’s memory somewhere beneath the sand.
EDIT: Boothby and Hill returned to Ogunquit the following morning and searched for more than two hours. The lower tide exposed the area they hoped to reach, but the sentimental gold peridot ring was not there.
“Nothing but coins, trash and two earrings,” Boothby reported afterward.
The unsuccessful search was a reminder that even careful planning, favorable tides and years of experience cannot guarantee a recovery. The ring may have been moved by the surf, buried beyond the detectors’ reach or found by someone else during the weeks since it disappeared.
For Boothby and Hill, that uncertainty is part of every hunt. Some searches end with a ring returned and an emotional reunion. Others end with two hours of walking, digging and listening—and the knowledge that they gave a stranger’s lost memory every reasonable chance of being found.
Why They Search for Strangers
Boothby’s wife, Cheryl, frequently photographs and records his searches. Hill’s wife, Peggy, has also shared in the stories that come with the hobby. Ring finding has become something their families understand and, at times, experience alongside them.
Hill has brought his grandson, Drystan, on several recoveries.
During one search, they helped recover a ring for a woman with cerebral palsy. For a 10-year-old watching the adults around him, it was another opportunity to see how a lost object could bring complete strangers together.
After accompanying his grandfather on several searches, Drystan made an observation that quietly explained the appeal of it all.
“We’ve met a lot of nice people,” Drystan said.
That may be the real reward.
Boothby and Hill could spend their time searching only for objects they could keep. Instead, some of their most memorable finds have been returned to people they did not know before the search began. They give away their time, use their own equipment and occasionally rearrange their lives around someone else’s emergency.
A ring finder often enters the story during a moment of panic. The telephone has slipped from a pocket. The keys have disappeared. The wedding band is gone. Someone is retracing every step, looking through the same sand again and again.
Then two men with metal detectors arrive.
Back at Ocean Park, Boothby and Hill continued moving through the fog. Their headphones covered their ears, their eyes remained fixed on the sand, and their detectors passed over ground that looked no different from everything around it.
The horizon was still missing. The ocean was still hidden. Somewhere beneath the surface, there was always the possibility of finding something.
And, perhaps, meeting one more nice person along the way.
Many thanks to Dennis Boothby and Gary Hill for their time on Tuesday, July 28, 2026 in foggy Ocean Park in Saco, Maine.
For more great stories from Dennis and Gary - Visit Ring Finders of Maine on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Ring-Finders-of-Maine-61550599401489/
Visit Dennis' page on The Ring Finders website: https://theringfinders.com/Dennis.Boothby/
Here's a gallery of photos that Boothby shared with us, mostly taken by his wife, Cheryl Boothby.
