A wedding ring slipped away somewhere in the Current River during a Labor Day weekend float trip, and for Michael Hamtil, that meant the sinking realization that a piece of his marriage was now resting on the riverbed. About one week later, on September 14, 2026, he had it back on his finger, thanks to a scuba dive led by Jason Simpkins near one of the Ozarks' largest natural springs.
A Ring Gone, Then a Dive at Cave Spring
Hamtil, who is affiliated with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, lost the ring during the float trip, and Simpkins led the scuba dive that eventually found it. The recovery effort centered on Cave Spring, a spot on the upper Current River in Shannon County that sits roughly five miles below Akers Ferry, according to the L-A-D Foundation. The dive ended with Simpkins returning the ring to Hamtil, and a photo marking the moment was made in downtown St. Louis.
Cave Spring itself is no ordinary stretch of river. The L-A-D Foundation counts it among the 20 largest springs in Missouri, and Leo and Kay Drey donated the site to the foundation in 1970. The spring feeds into a river system that Congress designated in 1964 as America's first national river, part of what became the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.
A Pattern of Rings Lost and Found in the Water
Hamtil's story is not the only recent case of a diver pulling a wedding band back from the depths. Near Willow Beach on the Colorado River, volunteer divers recovered a ring that had been missing for 34 days, finally locating it on their third attempt, according to KGNS. The newlyweds who lost that ring discovered it was gone during an August 2025 trip to Willow Beach near Las Vegas and turned to Facebook for help finding divers willing to search.
That Colorado River search is part of a broader volunteer effort at Willow Beach, where a community of divers regularly clears debris and hunts for personal items lost in the water, the station's report notes. Their weekly cleanups pull up bottles, cans, fishing rods, chairs and tires along with the occasional wallet or phone, and the work has drawn recognition from Nevada Fish and Wildlife.
Thousands of Lost Items, a Fraction Reunited With Owners
The scale of what volunteer divers find underwater each year is striking. In 2024 alone, the Willow Beach divers recovered 147 phones, according to InvestigateTV, and they managed to return 40 of them to their owners. The documented recoveries of Hamtil's ring and the Colorado River band found after 34 days underscore how notable such finds can be.
There is no indication that the Willow Beach divers had any connection to the search that brought Hamtil's ring back from the Current River. But the two stories share a common thread: a piece of jewelry disappearing into moving water, and someone willing to go looking for it anyway. For Hamtil, that search ended with Simpkins handing the ring back in downtown St. Louis, closing out a Labor Day mishap that could easily have stayed lost for good.
