PALATKA, Fla. – Larry Soncrant stepped onto Daytona Beach on July 5 with his headphones on, metal detector in hand, searching for treasures beneath the sand.
It’s an activity he took up nearly six years ago. But what he found on that day was his best find yet.
“I don’t know what the drive was, but it was there,” Larry said.
He said after 50 steps, a loud beep pierced through his headphones. Beneath several inches of sand lay a Clemson University class ring from 2023. Typically, Larry holds onto his finds for the off-chance that the person who lost them will find him.
But this ring gave him a promising lead.
It came with a full name engraved on the inside that would launch a monthlong search and ultimately forge an unexpected friendship between the Palatka family and a 24-year-old in South Carolina.
“I told Shirley I’ve got to find this girl,” Larry said of the conversation with his wife after discovering the ring. “I don’t know what drove me to do as much as I did, but it took me a solid month of going through Facebook and Instagram.”
The Palatka resident, with help from his 22-year-old daughter, scoured social media platforms and sent countless emails trying to locate the ring’s owner.
Weeks passed without success, and Larry began to worry.
“Like something happened to her,” he said, beginning to worry. “She was family to me.”
The breakthrough came when Caroline Crowe finally checked her email account. There, she found multiple messages from a stranger about her lost ring – the same ring she had removed while at the beach on July 4, just one day before Larry’s discovery.
“Honestly, the whole story was insane,” Crowe said. “And the fact that he found it the day after I lost it. And then he ended up getting in touch with me is crazy because I never thought I’d see it again.”
Larry said all he asked was that he get to hand it to her in person. He didn’t want any money -- didn’t want any praise. So, Crowe invited Larry and Shirley to Charleston.
“There could not have been a kinder guy to have found my ring,” she said.
Without hesitation, the Soncrants drove from Palatka to return the ring in person.
“We met at a restaurant, and we walk in the door and she just stands up,” Shirley Soncrant recalled. “She gave Larry this big hug. It was like she was family right along - like we had never not known her in our lives.”
For Larry, who typically finds one ring for every 500 bottle caps while cleaning beaches from Jacksonville to New Smyrna, this discovery transcends all others. “When it comes to metal detecting, Caroline is the best thing I’ve ever found,” he said.
The connection has grown beyond the initial ring return. Crowe said Larry and Shirley are now family and invited to her wedding.
“And I’m gonna tell you something - we’ll be there,” Larry said.
