Divers bring closure to families while cleaning up waterways
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Two guys from our region found a new hobby exploring all the random stuff that ends up underwater in local rivers and ponds.
They started looking to remove things like cars as a cleanup effort, then things took a turn.
Their new hobby went from cleaning up waterways to solving mysteries. At first look, you’d think Jeremy Sides and Adam Brown were just a couple of guys looking for sunken treasure.
They run a YouTube page, Wrecked and Recovered, dedicated to finding something that no one is looking for.
“We travel the country searching for missing people and cold case files. Usually, the people that have been missing for 10, 20, 30 years and vanished off the face of the planet and they’re missing in their cars. It’s a pretty good indicator that if we find the car we can find the missing person,” said Sides.
Sides alone has solved three major missing person cases.
“It’s sad, and they’re heartbroken, but then you get to bring closure to the families. There’s no one way to describe it,” he said.
The main places they look are boat ramps, under bridges, rivers, and even ponds like Mayor’s Fishing Hole in Augusta.
Brown said: “We have a small portable boat with high-end sonar technology that gets us a pretty good image of vehicles if they’re underwater.”
They send down a giant magnet that stays hooked to the car.
“We get our scuba gear on and dive on it and check the license plate to see if it belongs to the missing person. We check the windows if they’re up. If they’re down, it’s probably just a stolen car, and I would say 95 percent of the time it’s a stolen car in the water,” said Brown.
They use their own tow truck to pull the cars out. It’s also good for the environment.
“The reality is there are hundred and thousands of cars in the water across the United States, and our goal is to clean up every single one of them,” he said.
Two guys not only helping clean up local waterways but helping families finally find closure.
Sides said: “There are lots of people hurting, and that want answers. They just can’t find anyone who will take on the case, but we have the means, the tools, and the motivation, so why not get in the water and look around? It’s what we like to do and it has meaning behind it.”
They have traveled as far as Idaho and California to help solve some of these cases. Their goal is to continue doing this for as long as they can and maybe even start removing airplanes that have crashed.
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