GALVESTON, Texas – Beneath the waves and sand on the beach in Galveston you never know what you'll find.
That's an especially intriguing prospect for treasure hunters Robert Hodson and Clyde Longworth, who on Sunday, hit the jackpot for a man they didn't even know.
The men showed us a few of the several hundred foreign coins the men located.
Several hundred in one location is an unusual find.
"Sometimes we don't find like maybe $2 or $3 in maybe a little coin spill," says Hodson. "But this was a big coin spill."
Longworth recalls his initial reaction with Hodson.
"I told him when we were digging them up, 'This is a theft. Somebody dumped this. This isn't a couple coins that accidentally dumped out of somebody's pocket.'"
Their search led them to the internet and a Facebook page where they found out the dump indeed was no accident.
They were able to verify the coins belonged to Peter Grasso, who had the coins, several guns and a flat-screen TV stolen when he was recovering in a senior living center from triple-bypass surgery.
"Here I am, lying in a bed trying to heal up from very major surgery," recalls Grasso. "Very traumatic for me because I don't get a triple bypass every day."
Since making contact with Grasso, the two treasure hunters have been going out to find more of the stolen coins and to clean them before handing them over.
The coins aren't worth much on the open market, but the men know to their owner they're priceless.
"We're not going to find the guns, and obviously we're not gonna find the flat screen TV out there that's worth finding," says Longworth. "But we can get him a little something back."
The men haven't disclosed the location of where the coins are buried, because they don't want anyone to go out and take them.
They plan to present all the coins they can find to Grasso next Tuesday at the monthly meeting of their treasure hunting club which happens to meet at the same location where Grasso is recovering.
