TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – College students working summer jobs to save up for school is not unusual, but what two Grand Traverse County young men are doing has them diving to new depths to help cover their collegiate costs.
There are worse ways to save up money for college than scuba diving. The idea hit Michigan Tech senior engineering students Ben VanderHeide and Brett Bruner out of the blue when one of them dropped his phone in Lake Superior.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh, we have scuba diving equipment,’” Brunner recalled. “So I kind of triangulated my location and about five hours later, we were back in the water going down and Ben actually found it.”
The pair knew they weren’t the only ones who accidentally dropped things in deep water but were one of the few folks who had the equipment and skills to go in after them.
“So it all started off when my uncle reached out and said, ‘Hey, my friend dropped some fishing equipment. Like would you guys go to like recover it? He’ll give you some money.’ And we’re like, oh, that’s a good idea,” Bruner said.
That good idea turned into a summer job for the two.
“We’ve been pretty busy. We get a lot of messages for phones or fishing equipment or stuff here and there,” VanderHeide said. “People send us a message and see if we can’t find whatever they dropped off their boat or any accidents that happen like that. So far we found phones a lot of fishing equipment, stuff like that.”
Some jobs are easy, but others require a little more skill, luck and patience.
“It really depends a lot on the water. If we’re out here in the Bay or some of the clear lakes like Elk Lake, we’ve got a really good success rate if you got a good location on it. I would say at that point. It’s probably 80 or 90%,” VanderHeide said. “Some of the inland lakes that’s where things get dicey. If there’s weeds on the bottom or a lot of muck and silt, it’s almost impossible. We’ll bring out a underwater metal detector.”
Cell phones and fishing gear seem to be the most frequent calls, but this pair is up for just about anything. They get to dive, something they love to do, and they get paid. And they get the reward of bringing stuff back to the surface from someplace it never should have been.