The Lost-Jewelry Hunters

On a picturesque fall afternoon, Keith Wille pulled into an unfamiliar driveway in eastern Connecticut and popped his trunk. He removed a “digger” (a heavy-duty bladed spade), an XP Deus wireless metal detector, and a White’s Bullseye II pin-pointer, a hand-held wand that vibrates or chimes when it’s near metal. Wille is twenty-eight and a member of the Ring Finders Directory, a group of metal-detection enthusiasts dedicated to recovering lost things at little or no charge. He had arrived at the home of Jim Flynn, who had e-mailed him three days before, asking for help.