Seton Hall Magazine, Summer 2008 - Seton Hall University

FEATURE | B O B G I L B E R T
24
l o s t
f o u n d
WHEN IT COMES TO RETURNING
MISSING SETON HALL GRADUATION
RINGS, THERE’S A LOT OF TRUTH
TO THE SAYING THAT WHAT GOES
AROUND, COMES AROUND. TAKE
THE CASE OF A RING LOST AT SEA
FOR NEARLY 30 YEARS.
Photos by Greg Leshé
In
June 2007, Ed Costello, an
information technology manager
for the Long Island Rail Road, was
finishing up a vacation along the
isolated shoreline of Shelter Island,
N.Y. Despite teasing by his teenage
daughters, he had brought along a
new metal detector and had been
scanning the area — once home to
18th-century pirates — for “treasure.”
“I’m one of those guys with
sunglasses and a metal detector
on the beach that everybody laughs
at,” he jokes. Over the week, he had
found two silver spoons and a lot
S E T O N H A L L M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 0 8
of change at various beaches, and a
pair of silver earrings on his rental
property.
On the last Sunday morning of
the vacation, he set out at 6 a.m. with
a cup of coffee in one hand and his
$450 device in the other. He turned
on the detector while walking along
a path toward the beach near his
cottage. The detector’s alarm sounded,
and Costello put down his coffee
cup. There, 200 feet back from the
water’s edge and seven inches down,
Costello dug up a Seton Hall ring.
Inside were the initials “R.D.S.”
25