‘I felt like I won the gold medal’: Jewel detective reunites B.C. Olympian with lost Cartier bracelet

Olympian Madison Mailey sought a metal detector specialist after losing her Cartier bracelet, bought to celebrate her team’s 2020 gold win, in Stanley Park.

Olympic rower Madison Mailey thought she had lost a piece of her gold medal legacy, until a jewel sleuth came to the rescue.

The Vancouver-born athlete was cycling through Stanley Park with a friend on July 31, when she noticed her Cartier bracelet was gone. She had bought it to commemorate her rowing team’s gold medal win at the Tokyo 2020 Games, and had it engraved with ‘Olympic champion’ and ‘Canadian women’s eight.’

Desperate to find the golden memento, Mailey and her husband, Olympian Maxwell Lattimer, scoured the park up and down for hours until it was too dark to continue.

Just as they were about to give up hope they found Chris Turner, better known as The Ring Finder, online.

Turner – who has recovered hundreds of lost items and sometimes utilises the help of a metal detector – admitted to CTV News that at first, he wasn’t overly confident that he would find the missing bracelet.

“Yeah, it didn’t sound good,” he said.

“I mean, how do you actually retrace a bike path for maybe two or three miles?”

.But before starting the search, Turner asked a series of detailed questions, and something clicked.

The next morning while Mailey was at work, Turner and Lattimer set off and searched a specific stretch of trail near Beaver Lake.

“I told Max, if we’re going to find it, it’s going to be on the right side,” Turner said.

He was right. Within minutes, Lattimer looked down and spotted half the bracelet on the ground. Turner soon found the other piece nearby.

“He was vibrating,” Turner said. “Max didn’t think there was a chance. He was shaking.”

They decided to surprise Mailey with the news, over the phone.

A video posted to Instagram captured the moment she learned the bracelet had been recovered, and she was gasping and squealing with joy.

“No way,” she can be seen saying in the video. “Thank you so much!”

Turner, upon seeing her reaction, said “I felt like I won the gold medal.”

Fortunately, Mailey found that the bracelet hadn’t even broken, it was simply missing a couple of screws.