Mike Lang was applying sunscreen aboard a boat about a mile offshore from North Avenue Beach during the Chicago Air and Water Show when his wedding ring slipped off his finger. He heard it hit the boat's fiberglass on the way down, then watched it disappear into Lake Michigan, sinking 26 feet to the lakebed below.
Lang, a Chicago photographer, marked the spot by tossing a glass bottle into the water and recording the coordinates where the ring went in, according to NBC Chicago. With the location logged, he reached out to Yohei Yamada, a diver who has become something of a fixture in Chicago's boating community for tracking down items lost to the lake. Yamada found the ring nearly 24 hours after it was lost, searching through sand and rocks across multiple dives before locating it.
Lang described Yamada as selfless, amazing and kind, and posted about the recovery on social media, where commenters called the diver a legend. He also expressed his gratitude directly to Yamada for pulling the ring from the lakebed and returning it.
A Diver Known for Finding the Unfindable
This is not the first time Yamada has reunited someone with a piece of jewelry lost to Chicago's waterways. In July 2020, he retrieved former Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo's wedding ring after it slipped into Belmont Harbor when Rizzo shook his hands dry on a boat, a recovery that first drew wider attention to his work, per WROK 1440 AM. Rizzo had lost weight over the offseason, which left the ring loose enough to fall roughly 20 feet into harbor weeds.
Beyond wedding bands, Yamada has built a niche business retrieving dropped valuables from the lake, including cellphones, wallets, boat propellers and even a $30,000 Rolex, sometimes charging as little as $100 if he happens to already be geared up, according to Sports Illustrated. This season alone, he has found four wedding rings and a very expensive bracelet, and he has said that returning valuable items to their owners is the most enjoyable part of the job.
Yamada's work has not been without controversy. In February 2022, a Chicago Police Marine Unit sergeant resigned while facing dismissal charges tied to accepting a $1,000 bribe from Yamada back in April 2017, in exchange for police sonar equipment and unauthorized access to the Chicago Harbor Lock to recover a client's lost boat propeller, as reported by Fox 32 Chicago. Charging documents in that case alleged the sergeant let private salvage work use official police equipment and signed off on a false dive report.
Lost Rings Are a Predictable Cost of a Massive Lakefront Tradition
The Chicago Air and Water Show has grown a long way from its 1959 origins with an $88 budget at Chicago Avenue and the lakefront. It is now the oldest and largest free admission air show in the country, drawing an estimated 2 million spectators to the shoreline each year, according to WTTW. Hundreds of boats anchor offshore for the best view, often crowding into gathering areas like The Playpen near Ohio Street Beach.
That density brings its own hazards. The Chicago Fire Department responded to 480 water-related emergency calls citywide in 2024, per CBS News Chicago, a reminder that crowded mooring areas regularly see accidental drops, mechanical trouble and medical emergencies during major summer weekends. For this year's show, the U.S. Coast Guard enforced a safety zone on Lake Michigan near North Avenue Beach, restricting watercraft transit and anchoring daily from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. between August 13 and August 16, under rules established by the Chicago Harbor Safety Committee. Federal regulations governing Captain of the Port Lake Michigan safety zones bar unauthorized vessel entry or anchoring within the designated show coordinates without explicit Coast Guard authorization.
Divers like Yamada operate in a different legal lane than the treasure hunters chasing historic shipwrecks. Under Illinois law, shipwrecks resting on Lake Michigan's bottomlands, such as the 1860 Lady Elgin, belong to the state under the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987. Recently dropped personal property, like a wedding ring, remains private property subject to ordinary civil recovery and finder arrangements. Independent networks such as The Ring Finders maintain metal-detecting directories across Illinois and Indiana that have logged more than 19,000 successful recoveries of lost rings and valuables from land and shallow water as of this year.
