Facebook connects LI couple who lost ring with metal detector enthusiast

TOBAY BEACH, Long Island (WABC) -- Its unending circle symbolizes a love that never ends, but for one Long Island couple, a wedding ring lost on a beach in Nassau County, suddenly symbolized everlasting hopelessness.

Facebook and a metal detector helped to save the day.

This is all Brandon's Potter's fault.

"I am taking full responsibility for this," Brandon said.

On Saturday, Debbie Potter handed him her wedding ring to hold while she got their kids, Brayson and Jonah, ready for the beach.

He put the ring, the wedding ring his father, who is a jeweler, designed especially for her, in the pocket of her shorts. At the end of their day at Tobay Beach, it was nowhere to be found.

"I asked my husband for my ring back, and he said, 'Oh, I put it in your jean shorts.' Immediately, I was like, 'It's gone!' Before I even checked the pocket I knew that it was gone because I had been shaking out my shorts, getting the sand off," Debbie said.

The two searched the beach frantically, police even helped, but they couldn't find it.

They went home and, desperate, Brandon went on Facebook at the exact time that Mike Jandris, a total stranger, was going on Facebook to find the owner of one of the many rings he had found on beaches with his metal detector.

"As I was putting it on Facebook, Brandon got in touch with me. He just happened to see me posting a lot and he told me that his wife had just lost her ring. I said well, 'Is it in the water or on the sand?' And he goes, 'It's in the sand,'" Jandris said.

Mike volunteered to help.

"All of a sudden Mike comments, 'I'm on the way there, I'll be there in 35 minutes,'" Brandon said.

It took just five minutes for Mike to find it.

"When I found it he just started hugging me and high fiving, you know, it was just really, really nice," Jandris said.

"I was so happy and I said, 'Mike I have to give you a reward.' And he said, 'I don't want a reward. All I would like is a picture, a selfie with you and a picture of the ring," Brandon said.

Mike's reward was the picture, and knowing he had helped a total stranger.