EASTHAM (CBS) – After months of searching the sands of Cape Cod, a man pulled off a holiday miracle for a New Jersey couple.

By day and night Luke Berube is a hunter. “It starts to get into your head,” he says.

And that’s what happened when a New Jersey couple dropped into his metal detector hobby shop on the Cape last August, so distraught at losing a white gold wedding band.

Eric Fitzgerald and Justin Gazi even scrawled a desperate message in the sand.

“I never thought that I would see it ever again,” Fitzgerald told WBZ.

Berube and a ring finder buddy scoured the shallow waters off Eastham’s Campground Beach dozens of times often staying for hours.

“You just want to keep going, keep going, keep going, even if it seems like all hope is lost,” Berube said.

Luke isn’t exactly sure what prompted him to return to Campground Beach after dark on Christmas Eve, but he did finding some coins, an empty bottle of Fireball whiskey, and the ring.

“I knew I had it,” Luke said.

It was 50 yards from the primary search area under 10 inches of sand.

“It’s just unbelievable, just amazing,” Fitzgerald said. “There might have been a couple tears too,” Gazi adds.

Luke says his hobby is relaxing even though he’s retrieved jewelry worth up to $40,000 for only a nominal reward. But that’s not why he does it.

“It makes you feel good, overall it’s just the satisfaction of getting it back for somebody,” Berube said.

“I consider him now my angel,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s just spectacular. He’s just such a great guy and I can’t thank him enough.”

And for Berube, that makes a seemingly lonely mission anything but.

“It’s just the thrill of finding it,” Berube said.