Chris Smith: She lost her ring in the Russian River and Todd wasn’t there to find it

Most every summer weekend, Todd Binder is at idyllic Summerhome Park on the Russian River near Forestville with his diving mask.

Not infrequently, tourists in rented canoes are dumped into the river there by mini-rapids or a great shoreline redwood log. Binder, who’s 42 and works in software, uses his underwater mask to scan the river bottom for items lost as canoes swamp in the shallow water. He finds loads of sunglasses.

Once he recovered a GoPro camera. “That was probably the top treasure,” he said.

Binder (rhymes with tinder) wasn’t at the beach Saturday when a canoe carrying Rachael Esperanza of Santa Clara County and some friends capsized.

Esperanza screamed. She’d lost not sunglasses or a GoPro, but her heirloom diamond ring.

Summerhome’s Dan Ellecamp asked if he could help. Esperanza and the others searched the river bottom for about an hour to no avail.

Ellecamp took her contact information and said he’d seek help searching for her ring. He asked if she cared to offer a reward. Yes, she said. $1,500.

Treasure diver Binder wasn’t there that day. Ellecamp mentioned the lost ring and reward to Binder’s cousin, Kyle Smith, also a Summerhome longtimer.

Smith, who’s 36 and does structural drafting, grabbed his cousin’s mask and waded in.

Maybe 20 minutes later, while scanning the sand and rocks below a few feet of fairly clear water, he said, “I saw just a tiny bit (of a ring) shining through.”

Soon, an elated Esperanza had her ring back and an awed Smith had $1,500 deposited to his bank account.

Smith’s cousin, Binder, is almost finished computing the fee for the use of his mask.

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ABOUT THAT FLAG: You’ll recall that a framed American flag made of fire hose used to battle flames last October was put up for auction earlier this week for the benefit of some of the sickest or most woefully injured dogs you can imagine.

Perhaps you wondered, as I did, what the flag sold for.

A lot. $21,000.

The woman who paid that price at the Dogwood Animal Rescue Project auction at the Graton casino prefers to be anonymous. She told me, “I have a lot of emotion going with the fires.”

She said loved ones lost their home: “They barely made it out in time.”

Another of her relatives was forced to evacuate.

She also shared she’s an animal lover and a retired animal control officer aware of the suffering so many animals endure.

The flag she bought at the Dogwood fundraiser was created and donated by Eric Paine, a 1990 Sonoma Valley High grad working now for the Amador Fire Protection District.

Eric returned to this area to fight the October firestorms. While he was here, nine evacuated members of his Sonoma County family set up camp at his home up in the Sierra Nevada. His grandmother lost her place at Villa Capri.

At 46, Eric has fought many fires.

“None of them,” he says, “had the sentimental attachment that this one does.”

The firefighter is attached, too, to Dogwood, having adopted two dogs from the rescue operation. Thus his motivation to donate his fire-hose flag.

The woman who took it home is loving it.

“I have it over the fireplace in my family room right now,” she said. “Every time I look at it I think of a lot of things.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Chris Smith at 707-521-5211.