When Daniel Verguizas lost his wedding band at the beach on Australia Day he was certain the beloved ring he’d purchased in Norway was gone forever.
His beautiful wife Ingerlise Svaleng, 40, was far from impressed with his absent-mindedness, so he decided to employ the services of a Sydney treasure hunter in a last-ditch bid to find the ring.
The bizarre move paid off and a day later the precious metal detective who goes by the name ‘Big H’ found the ring buried in the sand at Gunnamatta Beach in the Sutherland Shire.
Pictured: Daniel Verguizas holds up his wedding ring which was found by ‘Big H’ (pictured)
‘I couldn’t believe it. I thought there was absolutely no chance we were going to find it,’ Mr Verguizas told Daily Mail Australia.
‘It started pouring rain and after about an hour and a half we were about to give up.’
The 39-year-old had spent the public holiday lounging on the beach with his bride of six years, but when he went for a dip he took his ring off, put it in his wallet and slipped it into her purse.
After arriving home and opening the wallet he realised it was no longer there.
He said his wife ‘actually handled the situation pretty well’ but he ‘could tell she was very sad’.
Mr Verguizas wasn’t 100 per cent sure he’d lost it at the beach or if it came out somewhere else, so he retraced his steps to a local chicken shop and to Coles, but the precious item was nowhere to be found.
Daniel Verguizas and his wife Ingerlise (pictured together) got married in Norway six years ago
The couple (pictured) spent the public holiday lounging on the beach at Gunnamatta in the Sutherland Shire
Mr Verguizas snaps a photos of Ingerlise wading through the water on Australia Day
The desperate couple upturned their bags and pockets dozens of times before posting a notice to the community Facebook page Everything Sutherland Shire, to ask if anyone in the area had seen it.
That’s when they first heard of the unique services of Shannon Hedgecoe – a heavily tattooed man with a flowing red beard armed with a metal detector who loves to search for long lost valuables.
They drew up a 20-meter perimeter around where they had been sitting the day before and Mr Hedgecoe started the painstaking job of scouring the scene and listening for a beep.
‘Because it was Australia Day the day before, there were bottle tops everywhere so he was getting sounds the whole time,’ Mr Verguizas said.
‘We’d hired him for two hours and the time was almost up when he dug something out of the sand and said: ‘Is this your ring?”
Ingerlise said the needle in a haystack find meant much more than simply recovering the monetary value.
‘It’s funny – it’s just a ring but what it symbolises is so important,’ she said.
‘We got the ring in Oslo where we got married, so it was special to us and part of our history.’
A 20-meter perimeter was drawn up and Mr Hedgecoe (pictured) started the painstaking job of scouring the scene and listening for a beep
‘Because it was Australia Day the day before, there were bottle tops everywhere so he was getting sounds the whole time,’ Mr Verguizas said. Pictured: Mr Hedgecoe
Ingerlise said the needle in a haystack find meant much more than simply recovering the monetary value
The loving couple also got each other’s names engraved on the inside of each other’s wedding band, making it easy for Mr Verguizas to identify.
The mysterious Mr Hedgecoe told Daily Mail Australia he was confident he’d eventually find the ring.
‘If it’s there, 100 per cent, I will find it,’ he said.
Mr Verguizas offered the 35-year-old ‘some money’ for finding the ring, but normally Big H offers his services for free.
‘Sometimes people offer me a carton of beer or something but normally I don’t charge them,’ Mr Hedgecoe said.
‘I just do it for the joy of helping people out.’
After years of gold prospecting and metal detecting as a hobby, he’s now started a service called Big H’s Precious Recoveries.
Just a day after finding Mr Verguizas’s ring, he was back at it again recovering an 18-karat diamond wedding ring and returning it to an elderly lady free of charge.
‘He is an absolute gem of a man!’ Ingerlise said.
‘We got the ring in Oslo where we got married, so it was special to us and part of our history,’ Ingerlise said (pictured with Mr Verguizas)