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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Friday, January 14, 2005

Lost ring finds its one-upper

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Who knew there were so many stories about lost class rings! A story about a McKinley High School ring found in the ocean after 46 years prompted a slew of similar anecdotes.

But here's the topper:

Dale Rohlf started metal-detecting in 1965. After retiring from a career in the Navy, he turned his hobby into a business, All Island Treasure Detectors. He sells and rents metal detectors and does searches for people. He goes metal-detecting just for fun, too. His best class ring story just happened last month.

In early December, he found a 1936 Kaua'i High School ring at an O'ahu beach in about 5 feet of water, buried under sand and rocks.

Rohlf cleaned it up and found an inscription inside:

E. Kaluahine. His next step was to scour the phone book.

"You would think that you could find the people, but even with the ones with names in them, about half the time, I just run into dead ends."

He found a Kaluahine listed on O'ahu and gave that number a call. It was a lucky guess. "Well, that has to be Auntie Eleanor on Kaua'i," he was told.

Eleanor's niece, Gordene, said she was headed to Kaua'i and would take the ring to Eleanor, now 86 years old. A few days later, Rohlf got a call from Eleanor thanking him for returning her ring, lost for 68 years! She told him the story about the lost ring:

The ring had been a big deal to her. Her parents scraped up the money to buy it. On prom night, her date asked if he could wear it on his little finger. She said, well, OK. She had such a good time at her prom, she forgot to ask for the ring back. The next week, she went looking for the boy and was told he moved to O'ahu. She never heard from him again.

Rohlf said it looked like the ring had been sized and worn for about a year. He's guessing that the boy resized the ring and gave it to someone else before it got lost.

Ordinarily, Rohlf charges between $40 and $100 to perform a search for someone, but if he just finds something like this on his own time, he tries to return it for free. If he gets a reward, fine. If not, he's still happy he did it.

"There are a few mercenary types who just pocket the stuff," Rohlf says of some treasure hunters. "They figure it's their gain and make little attempt to find people. I don't know the percentage of metal detectors in Hawai'i who do that, but I do know the good ones."

He's had so many adventures through years of finding things that he's considering writing a book.

"You get couples who have a fight and throw their rings," Rohlf says. Then, they're sorry and they hire Rohlf to find them. One woman in such a situation was a softball player and she threw her ring far.

As for Eleanor Kamana'o Kaluahine, now Eleanor Malone, she's wearing her class ring on a chain around her neck. She says, "I don't want to lose it again!"

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.