Local resident Steve Wilk has been metal detecting on Block Island for years, exploring the beaches, coves, fields, and marshes. Sometimes he finds valuable things. Sometimes he finds cool things. This summer he found a cool and valuable thing hidden in the sand.
Wilk was out early on the morning after VJ Day, metal detecting with his friend Dave Bannon down on the beach at Ballard’s. Affectionately called White Trash Monday by many locals, VJ Day always draws a crowd when the weather is nice, as it was this year.And where there’s a crowd, there’s things left behind; besides the usual trash and mess, there are sometimes treasures left behind, buried in the sand.Wilk told The Times it only took about ten minutes of combing the beach with his metal detector before the beeping alerted him to something in the sand.“I reached down into the sand, and my finger slipped right into the ring,” Wilk said. He brushed the sand away to reveal a 1998 NCAA Championship ring. Wilk could see the name Whipple on the side of the ring, along with the letters HC. Enlisting the help of attorney Jim O’Neil, he set out to find the
