Jim, Don and the two Waynes have no use for the old schoolyard bully taunt, "Finders keepers, losers weepers." None whatsoever.

Unless, that is, the weeping is for joy and surprise, a large part of what keeps their crew searching, and putting what's lost back to its rightful owners.

Out on the beaches of Saskatchewan, waving their metal detectors and wading the lake in wetsuits, is where to find the Sand Sharks, pals Wayne Huzina, Wayne Stender, Don Munro and Jim Kish, occasionally joined by wives or friends. A seriously playful bunch, yet as serious about their play as any fisherman or golfer, the Kipling-area foursome has lost count of their accumulated loot over the past half-dozen years: thousands of rings, bracelets, pendants, neck chains, earrings and wristwatches; enough loose change to make them all hundredaires, or at least to pay for the day's coffee; a denture; a 50-dollar casino chip; a single loonie in a waterproof plastic sleeve (which also held $50 in paper bills); a tackle-trove of fishing gear, and enough sunglasses and bobby pins to build, well, a really, really big pile, perhaps a monument to sunglasses and bobby pins, the most-often lost beach accessories.

Funny thing happened during the fellows' time combing the province, and not just almost any Saskatchewan lakeshore you care to name, but likewise sports grounds and school yards. Treasure hunting will always be about the thrill of discovery, they say, but even those eureka moments of the most unusual finds pale to the satisfaction of returning a lost item to an owner who had given up hope.

These are the finds that the Sand Sharks tell most enthusiastically, as a golfer would detail a par-5 eagle or an angler his 12-pound walleye:

- The wedding ring at Kenosee Lake, lost by a woman who asked the Sand Sharks to take one last look. She arrived at the beach after they had started searching. "We asked her to describe the ring," says Huzina. "She started telling us and we said, hmm, does it look like this? We'd already found it."

- The gold ring, with high school crest and graduation year, enough clues for a former teacher to track down the owner in Brandon, and for the Sand Sharks to surprise her on Christmas morning with a Samaritan Santa gift under the tree.

See Petrie on Page A4

- The ball joint from a Caterpillar blade located under 18 inches of ditch snow, to save the owner more than $800 for a new replacement part.

- The wedding ring that an American hunter pulled off his finger when removing a glove in some tall grass near Kennedy. "He couldn't go home without that ring," says Stender. "No wedding ring? You could hear his wife: so what were you doing up in Canada, besides hunting?" The boys found the ring, and the grateful hunter, from Wisconsin, rewarded them with bricks of cheese.

- A wedding ring of an elderly woman from Regina. "She was so grateful," says Huzina, "You could tell the ring had been on her finger for many years, the way it was worn so thin. She wanted to give us $50 as a reward, but there was no way. You knew she didn't have $50 to just give away."

Every second year, the Sand Sharks run lost-and-found ads in Yorkton and Regina newspapers seeking out owners of their finds from the most recent summer searches. They ask only that the callers describe the piece and tell them roughly where it was lost, for a positive identification. They'll also put their metal detectors to work on searches for specific items. Just pay for their gas.

The offer is not entirely altruistic. No greater fun can be had in metal detection than rising to the challenge of a seemingly impossible find. On dry land, the fellows will lay out a twine grid, to ensure every square inch is double-checked; failing that, they'll sometimes work up the ground with a roto-tiller for a second search. In water, they wade out with their metal detectors and a scoop attached to a handle of bent aluminum pipe, for checking finds with one press of a toe, a pull-up of a muck sample and a look-see.

Three out of four specific searches, the Sand Sharks are successful. "I'm surprised we don't get calls from insurance companies," says Huzina. "They could save themselves an expensive settlement, the person would get back all that they really wanted in the first place, and we'd have some fun."

As for that one in four lost cause of lost causes, the Sand Sharks talk in the same frustration as the golfer who blows a an 18th-hole lead with a three-putt. A wedding ring, for example, dropped by the groom during a sunset lake ceremony, only for the poor guy to watch his token of eternal love bounce up off up the dock and then down between the cracks -- the guys worked that pier long into the evening, until it was heavy with retrieved mud samples, and no luck. Possibly a fish made off with the sparkling doodad. They can only speculate, in a tone decidedly p.o.'ed, and with half a mind to return some day. "If you lost it, even 20 or 30 years ago, it has to be there," says Huzina. Qualifies Stender: "Or somewhere on earth."

At 60, Huzina is the youngest of the Sand Sharks, yet has been playing with metal detectors the longest. He still has his first detector, from a kit he purchased when he was 19. "I didn't think I'd every get it put together. I did, though, and, oh, I was going to be rich. First thing I found was an old licence plate in the backyard. So much for rich." Brand-name "Coin Ranger" with a powder-blue tin control panel, that early detector now looks like a Model T alongside a Ferrari compared to the team's latest models, equipped with computer monitors that distinguish can between a buried penny, nickel, dime,, quarter or beer-can pull tab, and then relay the information through headphones in words, with a synthesized voice. Searching still takes a knack, though, and luck, both of which, the team agrees, seem to come most easily to Kish. "We have little coffee bets when we go out about who can find the oldest coin," says Huzina. "Jim has won so often that we're almost ready to run the metal detractors over him before we start, to make sure he hasn't concealed any coins."

Perhaps surprisingly, most beach finds are in water, not sand. Rocks and docks knock loose bracelets and pendants, and, as it turns out, that little mesh pocket sewn inside bathing trunks is even more useless a safekeep than it looks.

Next trip for the Sand Sharks will be the more remote northern lakes, the first beaches deserted as summer holidays end and families point children back to school. They also relish the hunt for antiquities -- coins, broaches and what-not, in long-abandoned picnic grounds and ball diamonds. "Only the oldtimers can tell us where those places used to be, and sadly there's not as many oldtimers around as there used to be," says Stender.