As Christina McCree turns the pages of a book that documents her successful metal detecting searches over the years, she can’t help but smile.
Her “Book of Smiles” holds a closeup photograph of each of the found items – from rings to keys and cell phones – along with photographs of the owners of the items and the date and location of the discoveries.
“The second best (reward) is finding the item, and the best thing is actually going and returning it to them, seeing that reaction. That’s priceless because a lot of these things are family heirlooms or wedding bands, college, high school rings.”
Most of the people who seek McCree’s help have already tried searching with a metal detector they bought or rented.
“I’m usually their last-ditch effort and a lot of them think it can’t be found, it’s gone forever. So, when I do find it, they’re just so shocked and happy. I’ve seen so many happy tears and hugs. That’s the most fulfilling thing.”
Her tally: “48 successful searches and between them all, 56 items,” said McCree, who’s an auditor with the Army Audit Agency. Most of those searches documented in her book have been through her listing on The Ring Finders’ website since August 2018. Founded by Chris Turner from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, The Ring Finders provides a directory of independent metal detecting specialists.
McCree’s favorite items to search for are rings and other types of jewelry and coins.
When McCree was a teenager, the movie “The Goonies” piqued her interest in treasure hunting and she got a metal detector. She enlisted in the Army in her home state of Pennsylvania and served active duty from 2005 to 2010, stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. She deployed twice to Iraq from there. McCree met her husband, Lindell McCree Jr., at Fort Leonard Wood and when they left the Army 15 years ago, they moved to Huntsville, where her father-in-law had retired.
She was hired at the Army Audit Agency in 2014 after earning an accounting degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
McCree’s husband gave her a metal detector for Christmas in 2012, and she got back into metal detecting with hobby hunts on the weekends. Then she found out about The Ring Finders on YouTube.
“It’s a way to help people with my hobby, that’s the driving factor,” she said.
One memorable find came when she was searching for a University of Alabama class ring in a pond in Somerville.
“It was lost for 20 years,” McCree said. The Somerville man was throwing a decoy duck into the pond, and he and his wife saw the ring fly off his finger. He had tried to find it himself with a metal detector but ended up flooding it. He contacted McCree in the fall of 2019 and in the first attempt, the water was too cold and in a second attempt, rain had left the water too deep for a search. Then on Aug. 16, 2020, she tried again, using hookah dive system gear. The ring was in the water 3 ½ to 4 feet deep.
“I remember I picked it up, I shook all the muck off,” she said. “I saw that red crimson stone shining up at me.”
A certified scuba diver, McCree found another class ring in April 2022.
A man was fishing off his boat in the Tennessee River near Decatur when his ring fell off. He marked the grid with a sonar fish finder. “We went back two days later, and I dove down, and it was within a couple of feet from where he marked.”
McCree’s longest journey to search for an item was to Starkville, Mississippi, on Thanksgiving Day in 2020. She got a call the day before from a woman who had lost the keys to her car, house and work, and McCree left home early Thanksgiving morning.
“It was a six-hour trip only to spend less than 10 minutes” searching for the keys and finding them among some leaves.
“I drove back, took a shower and was over at my family’s for the Thanksgiving meal,” she said.
McCree was called on to help a couple who evacuated from Louisiana after a hurricane hit and ended up at a friend’s lake house on Lake Tuscaloosa. The man was swimming in the lake and lost the ring he had put in his pocket.
On Sept. 11, 2021, “I just did a grid search, using my hookah system,” she said.
Even when she’s on vacation, she can be called on to help.
While visiting her parents in Tampa, McCree was metal detecting with her father on the beach on Dec. 30 last year when a man asked if she could search for his wife’s cell phone she had lost in the sand.
“Right there on the spot I was able to find it for her,” she said.
McCree has also found numerous rings that were thrown in anger or during an argument. “Actually, it’s quite common,” she said.
“I try my best on every search. I always give 110%,” McCree said. “I search every spot, I expand the grid. I like to walk away knowing I’ve searched every area, exhausted every option.
“God has blessed me with the gift of finding items and the resources to go on these searches. I always give him all the glory in all my searches.”
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