An act of kindness helped return a woman’s wedding ring that she lost in a lake near Yosemite National Park in California.
Mike Pelley, a scuba diver and YouTuber who also goes by “Merman Mike,” was contacted by the ring’s owner on social media. Mr. Pelley was able to locate it using a flashlight and a metal detector, and he documented the search on YouTube.
Jennie Boles, the wedding ring’s owner, was with family and friends over Father’s Day weekend at Bass Lake. While swimming, she was making sure her 2-year-old son didn’t swim out too far when she felt her wedding ring slip off.
“I was really devastated. I was crying with my friends all night that night,” Ms. Boles told The Epoch Times. “I’ve been married ten years, and that ring has sentimental value to me.”
Some of Ms. Boles’s friends mentioned that maybe a scuba diver could help her find it. After some searching, Ms. Boles found Mr. Pelley, who lives in the Sacramento area, on social media.
“She actually commented on one of my TikTok videos at first and said, oh my gosh, I just lost my wedding ring at Bass Lake. Is there any way you could help? And I immediately responded to her and said, please send me a message on either my Facebook or Instagram account,” Mr. Pelley told The Epoch Times.
“I was telling my husband, I was like, I can’t believe this guy’s willing to find it for me,” said Ms. Boles.
Bass Lake is about 45 feet deep, which is the deepest Mr. Pelley has ever dived. Due to silt at the bottom of the lake, the visibility was low.
“It was a man-made lake. So that means it was going to be super silty down there, especially because there [were] no dam gates open or any current that day. So there was nowhere for that silt to go, either,” said Mr. Pelley.
After a first dive, he decided to come up and regroup.
“I was finding a bunch of cans, bottle tops, all sorts of things that weren’t the ring. I realized that I probably wasn’t even in the right area anymore,” he said.
A friend of Ms. Boles’s family, who was there when the ring was lost, then threw an anchor tied to a rope into the water near the area where he remembered the ring being lost. Mr. Pelley went down a second time using the rope and anchor as a guide.
“I kept trying to ... feel the things under the silt to see if there was a ring or more trash. And I couldn’t really feel anything, so I had to take off my glove, and that was extremely unpleasant because of how cold the water was,” said Mr. Pelley.
Both the anchor and removing his glove turned out to be good moves, because shortly afterward, Mr. Pelley was able to locate the ring.
“I finally pulled up what I thought was going to be another piece of trash and ended up looking at a diamond. And I just absolutely blew up with excitement underwater,” he said.
Including both dives, the search took about two hours.
“He found it that quick. I was shocked,” Ms. Boles said.
“A lot of me thought it was going to be an all-day search, and then I was still going to come up to a bunch of really sad faces,” said Mr. Pelley.
He said he never charges money when he helps people recover lost items. If people insist, he will accept donations, but it’s not required.
“I like to call it my full-time hobby,” he said. “I never want someone to feel like because they don’t have extra money at that time that I wouldn’t go down and search just as hard for their valuable as well.”
Mr. Pelley has been documenting his underwater finds on YouTube for the past few years.
“The good stories are what fuel me. And I feel like I have this novel of amazing stories that I’ll get to go back on the rest of my life and just always have a smile anytime I need it,” he said.
“He helped a stranger. Like, he didn’t know me from nobody, and I did not expect him to even say yes. And the fact that he does it as a volunteer thing is amazing,” said Ms. Boles.
Mr. Pelley plans to continue to help people recover lost items and document his adventures on his YouTube channel. In the future, he hopes to transition into doing it full-time.
