iPhone 11 Lost in the Snow. Recovered 3 Days Later
It was late Tuesday night when she left for home. Somewhere between the East Village Condo and the car parked out front a cell phone fell out of her coat. How did she know? The “Find My Phone” app was signalling it was there. She had gone out looking for it but the heavy snow fall warning came true the next day and covered everything. In the hours between losing it and searching for it 10 cm of snow fell. Move forward to Friday. It was time to get a new phone but she was still getting a signal from her phone. In a last chance effort she found and called me. We talked for quite a while. In the end I made her a deal. Since I only lived 8 minutes away and since the phone was still active I would give it a try. If I did not find it, we would leave it as a good effort. No cost whatsoever. I thoroughly enjoy the hunt and the possibility of succeeding so it isn’t done begrudgingly in any way. I arrived and met her there. We looked at the app and it still indicated that the phone was somewhere near the front entrance. The condo complex was 15 stories high and had a snow clearing service. There were mounds of snow all around the entrance where they had cleared the snow. I checked each pile. No luck. What I figured would be a short hunt because of the app, turned out to be longer than expected. It seems that tall buildings and such make the location more of a suggestion as, even in the time we were there, the phone signal was moving about. Eventually she thanked me and offered to etransfer me something. I told her “no” as there is no need to add more on to the pain of losing her iPhone 11. 45 minutes into the hunt she was ready to call it quits. I asked her one more time, which door she left and where her car was parked. She recreated it to the best of her recall but it was fuzzy. If she took a direct path to the street, she would cross somewhere between the first parked car and the edge of the driveway. I said, “If we don’t find it here, I am going to call it quits.” I took my detector to it and I quickly got another signal. I used my foot and swept the snow away. There, face down, was her white iPhone. I looked up and she had this look of disbelief. “I can’t believe that you do this for people”. Her smile sunk. “Its been out here for 3 days. Its probably wrecked”. She bent down and picked it up. I was going to tell her to take it home and let it warm up slowly. Instead she pushed the home button. It started and lit up. She couldn’t believe it.
We found it, literally, in the last place I looked. She left with a big smile and a promise she would tell everyone she knows about it. That made me smile.
In November of 2017, Jerry was visiting his brother and wife in the Ormond Beach, Florida area and was in a bit of a hurry as he packed up his car to head north for the long drive home. And in his hurry he forgot that he had set his phone on the top of the car! Here is Jerry’s account. “My phone survived a brief thrill ride on top of my car before sliding off onto the shoulder of the road, where it survived a couple of cold and lonely nights before you, Mike, came to the rescue. I tried to hire someone from Craigslist for an “Odd Job” but nobody was interested. The day before I contacted Mike, I asked a local police officer to go out where the signal was still pinging and have a look around. It’s a work phone and they probably wouldn’t have charged me for it but I had some video on there of my daughters last Tae Kwon Do belt test that I didn’t want to lose. Glad I thought of metal detectors and glad I discovered you (and theringfinders.com)! Thanks again! Jerry O.”