Sometimes, we take the little things for granted… like a cell phone.
Today, in the midst of getting all of the kids into swimming lessons in the rain, my cell phone fell out of the backpack. I didn’t realize it had fallen out, but after getting everyone situated with their goggles and swimming teachers, I sat down and instinctively went to pull out my phone.
It wasn’t in my purse. It wasn’t in the backpack.
I double-checked. I triple-checked.
No phone.
I went back out to the car to see if maybe I had accidentally left it out there, though I was positive I had stuck it in the backpack. I searched in all the cracks and crevices of the car.
Still no phone.
I knew Jesse was going to meet us at swimming lessons in about 15 minutes, so I went back in and retraced all of my steps, thought about every possible scenario of what could have happened to my phone, and went through every article and item in both my purse and backpack.
Jesse got there and I met him with the grim news that my phone was missing. He looked through my purse and backpack just to be absolutely sure, he retraced all of my steps, he looked in the car, and he went to check at the swim club’s lost and found.
Nothing.
Gratefully, Jesse’s more tech-y than I and he has GPS tracking set up on his phone for mine. He checked that and we could see that the phone was right there at the swim club. I wasn’t sure whether that should make me relieved or feel like a crazy woman that I couldn’t find my phone when it was supposedly right there in the building and there were basically no other options as to where it could have been.
We turned on the Find My iPhone alarms and started hunting all over the building and outside and in the car for the obnoxious noise that it makes. Again, this resulted in nothing.
I began praying that God would please help us to find the phone and I tried to remember Lisa’s words of encouragement in her book Unglued as to how to respond in situations and not panic or become stressed.
I reminded myself that it is just a phone, after all. I’ve lived without one before and, if it was truly lost or stolen, I could survive without it again.
But I still was rather unsettled about the whole thing — and wondering where I’d left my brain that a bright pink phone could just up and grow legs and walk off like that.
As a last resort, I suggested that Jesse call the phone. I’m not even sure why. I guess I thought maybe by some weird set of circumstances, the Find My iPhone alarm wasn’t working or something and that the phone ringer would work and we’d figure out the phone had been right under our noses all this time.
Well, Jesse called my phone — and someone picked up! They immediately asked, “Are you the owner of the phone?”
I couldn’t be more relieved!
I guess they had found the phone in the grass near the entrance to the swim club and had retrieved it so it wouldn’t get rained on. And then they hung onto it assuming that the rightful owner would eventually call.
They were no longer at the swim club, but we picked a nearby rendezvous point and, within minutes, had the phone back in our possession! Not only was I so thankful that my phone wasn’t hopelessly lost, but my heart was very warmed that, of all the people who could have came upon it, it was someone with the integrity to want to return it to me.
And the next time I go out, I think I’m going to make sure that my phone is securely mounted in some zippered pocket in my purse — as I’m still not sure how it managed to fall out of the backpack! 🙂
Really happy that you found your phone. It would have been a hassle to transfer everything to a new phone.
I never was thanked for getting a purse back to its owner. On my way home from the daycare at 6 p.m., I saw a purse in the middle of the roadway nearby a local community college. I figured some tired college student left in on their bumper and drove off. I turned around and picked it up. It had mail, books, notebooks, eyeglasses, pens, and cosmetics. I found the owner on facebook after using google and emailed her that I had her bag and where she could pick it up. She emailed back several hours later to call her. I called and told her who I was. The only thing she said to me was “yeah, I already got it” and hung up! Because the bag had eyeglasses and cosmetics, I did not think that it was someone that got fed up with college and threw her stuff out the window so I don’t understand the rudeness.
Wow, I know how you feel this has happened to both my husband and I. My husband was at an NFL game and lost his phone, when I called him to check in some woman answered (huh, Okay??) She had found his phone and I was able to provide her with his seat number and she kindly returned it. Good to know there are honest people out there, this was an iphone! Also in a casino in Las Vegas I lost my phone, and my husband called my number from his phone and someone actually answered on the second ring (still don’t know quite how they could of heard it) and we were actually about 4 feet from each other, so it was returned. I gave her $10.00 because I just won on a slot machine, I hope her honesty rewarded her.
we just moved… and my phone got lost in the move. it wasn’t the cheapest phone ever but it certainly wasn’t an iphone! luckily, my dad had an old working one that he wasn’t using so I still have one!
Everyone should set up an ICE (In Case of Emergency) contact in their list of contacts. You can use this to locate the owner of a phone that is found.
I got an important lesson in integrity when I was about 14 at Six Flags (we live in TX). A man in front of me was filling up his water bottle at the fountain, and when he bent over to get a drink himself, money fell out of his back pocket. I bent down and picked it up to give it to him. It was $200 and all he and his family had for their trip. He couldn’t believe I was honest and actually had tears in his eyes once the realization of almost losing all of his money sunk in. It’s sad that people would assume the worst or even have to worry that people aren’t honest, but it’s wonderful that there are people with integrity out there. Hopefully, as more people experience those with integrity, they will try to mimic that behavior, too. What a blessing for your family to have the opportunity to experience someone so helpful and honest.
That’s great that someone returned it to you. Back in December, my husband lost his iPhone while we were out New Year’s Eve. The phone was never returned. Whoever picked it up, turned it off so that we weren’t able to call it. We’ve dropped one of our phones in water too. You have to leave it in the rice for at least a week without taking it out. Ours works completely fine now!
As a single mom of 4 including special needs it feels like we are always misplacing something including phones. Due to the time factor of searching for phones I now have key finders attached to each one–we have 3 at the moment. The older girls are not fond of the key alarms but it works. We attach the to the phone cases. So far this has worked out well.
I find I am always juggling items between 4 kids and try to look for ways to keep things organized. I also inventory items before we leave a place-“everyone got their phones?” I also try to keep us in the habit of putting items, i.e. phones, in the same location-purse pockets-so that way we have some habits built in.
I must have a homing device when it comes to lost cell phones. I have found three so far (!) and usually, the battery is dead so I can’t call “home” or receive a call from the owner.
In this case, just look at the phone type and return it to a corporate store (Verizon, AT&T or whatever) and they can contact the phone owner and connect him/her with the phone. Works great and I have always prayed that the phone continues to work. Even if it doesn’t, I figure, the phone owner’s faith in humanity is restored since it was returned.
On a side note, I have had people be shocked that I went to all that trouble. Kinda surprised me as it wasn’t a ton of trouble. I sure hope someone would do it for me if I lost my phone!
Sorry, didn’t mean to reply to this specific post (as my comments are unrelated, lol!). Need more coffee obviously!!
Those phones are tricky growing legs like that! I’m glad you found it and so thankful that nice person hung on to it for you!
By the way – I’m loving that book Unglued as well. I love her point of imperfect progress!
I love honest people. I never forget the day that my daughter left her purse with her Christmas gift given Nintendo DS in it as well as her saved for one whole year all by her little 8 year old self i-touch in it. We had already been away from the library for over 30 minutes before we discovered what she had done, I drove her right back to the library and straight to the front desk and explained to the lady what we had left behind and once we described the purse and contents she handed it over to us with a smile. I thought for sure that day I was going to have my daughter learn a hard lesson about the wrong rules of “Finders Keepers” that day.
my cell phone has been missing for a week now. I was praying tonight in the car that God would help me find it and my son chimed in from the backseat “mom, cell phones aren’t everything!” lol. I’m still hoping it will turn up, but I’m running out of places to look.
Phew! Dodged a bullet there!
We recently drove to FL to spend the day at the beach and when we walked out of the changing rooms after we arrived, someone’s very nice digital camera was sitting on the deck with no owner in sight. I put my stuff down next to it and kind of guarded it for a little bit to see if an owner would come back. No one did so I wrote a note “If you’re looking for your camera, please call #” and took it with me. We looked at the photos on it trying to see if we recognized anyone at the beach in them. Within minutes of getting our spot set up on the beach, my phone rang and it was the owner looking for the phone! I was so glad I was able to keep it safe for them, because my worry was that someone with bad intentions would see a forgotten camera and do who knows what with it and they would lose their family vacation memories.
So glad a kind person found and returned it to you. Reminds me of when my blue-tooth ear piece went missing for about a year. When my son, then 2, heard me telling someone that it was missing….he went right to the unused VCR, retrieved it from the slot, and gave it to me. What a stinker…and to remember that he had put it there at such a young age. We laugh about that still 5 years later!
You are so lucky that the person who found your phone took it in from the rain. My daughter also lost hers last week and found it in a puddle. After a week of the phone & battery sitting in a big bag of rice she put the battery back in the phone and it works! It was a really tough week and a half for her and me not being able to reach each other. How did I ever get by before without my phone!
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something that might seem really off.
I doubt this little “situation” had anything to do with you really. While you and your husband are extremely frugal, and have worked VERY HARD to get to where you are, if your phone hadn’t have been returned to you, it probably would not have made THAT big of a dent in your budgetsto replace it. (Please know I’m not saying this rudely at all! I fully acknowledge that your financial wealth is only because of God’s grace and favor, and your willingness to work hard and not give up!)
I think this probably had much more to do with the person that returned the phone to you. They just qualified themselves for a HUGE blessing. They were tested and chose to do the right thing, even if that may not have been their original intent. Someone else might call it karma, I call it God. I hope that the person who returned the phone to you reaps a huge blessing in their life, and that they know that blessing was released to them for making the choice to be an honorable, honest person.
I always lose my phone. Once I left it in the lettuce at walmart and a young boy found it and turned it in, or at a mall three hours away. Someone turned it in that time as well. It was mailed to me. My whole family knows I never know where it is. Luckily for me the phone must really like me., because it always finds its way home. ,
Glad you found your phone.
In my household, the first thing we do when phone goes missing is call it from another phone and listen for the ring. We also have tracking so we can locate our phones, which is fun. We have no need to track each other, but we have used it to track a missing phone. The phone can be traced to within a few yards of an address.
I’m wondering why the person who found it didn’t just turn it in to the desk at the pool instead of taking it with them though. It seems strange to me that someone would take it instead of turning it in. If it was some place where there isn’t a place to turn it in, like a park or something, then I could understand it, but if there is a place to turn it in, where the owner would check for it, that’s a lot better thing to do than to walk off with it.
It’s also a good idea to label your phone with your name and an alternate phone number, like your husband’s, so that someone can easily locate the owner. Same with other things, like cameras and ipods. That way if it gets lost, you have a better chance of it being returned if a kind soul finds it.
Another tip … always label a favorite toy of your child’s if it ever leaves your house. My nephew had a stuffed bunny that he dearly loved. It was old, worn, and tattered to the point that we referred to it as “roadkill.” But it always wore a dog tag with my nephews name and address. Sure enough, he lost it in an airport once, a long ways from home. We thought it was gone for good, but then one day it arrived in the mail, all bubble-wrapped. No return address, so we have no idea who the kind soul was who went to the trouble to return a beloved toy to a little boy, but we are most appreciative.
Love Find My iPhone — it’s especially great when you have the ringer turned off and you can’t find the phone at home.
Oh the crazy things we have to deal with when it comes to modern technology! 🙂
So glad you found it! What type of phone do you use?
An iPhone. It pays for itself over and over again because I have internet and email on-the-go and when traveling. If you have a business and can afford it as a business expensive, I cannot recommend it highly enough. So worth every penny — especially with the ability to tether and get internet anywhere you can get a phone signal!
You had a great outcome, I found mine 3 weeks ago with the screen lit up when I opened the washing machine door, it did not however make a full recovery. Does teach us to be more aware as we are always in a hurry and taking things for granted.
Argh! The washing machine!!! 🙁
Anytime one of our phones falls into the lake, toilet (YUCK), or gets wet, my husband has us take out the battery and put both phone and battery in a big bag of rice. He tells us to leave it in the rice back for 2 weeks to fully dry out all the electronic components. The rice absorbs the water. We only had one phone not work after doing this. It turned out my daughter only left it in the rice bag for a couple of days and it wasn’t dried out. Works really well!
I did the rice for 2 days and it didn’t work, I should have held out longer…it did have some function after going thru the entire cycle in my front loader.
Funny that it happened to me last weekend. I never do laundry at night but I felt like doing a load! Don’t you know I left my cell phone in my pocket. When I realized what I did, I immediately dried it off and put it in rice (thanks google!) I have a flip phone and the rice actually worked. I was so suprised.
Sometimes we do things that are so out of character. I learned a few lessons this weekend!
I can vouch for the rice! When my 3rd child was 3 months old, I was doing laundry at night (and feeling a little sleep deprivation, ha!) and I dropped my Palm Pre cell phone in the wash along with my full load of laundry. It went through the entire wash cycle. Found it was I unloading the washer 🙁 Just for kicks, because hey, it was already ruined, right? we took out the battery and put the phone and battery in a bag of rice for 3 weeks. Lo and behold, when we pulled it out, that phone powered on! Amazing! And all my data and pictures were still in tact! We had to call Sprint to reactivate that phone because we had written it off, but I used it for long time afterwards with no problems! Now I have a bag of rice in my pantry “for emergencies”. And we did have to use it recently when our toddler dropped our tv remote in the dog’s water bowl. Works for remotes too!
Yay! I’m happy that your phone is back with you Crystal. I know the exact feeling. 3 months ago I set my phone down to help someone and apparently left it on the grass and low and behold the sprinklers drenched it all through the night! A neighbor’s dog saw the light on my phone still flickering and it caught his attention so much she walked over to see what he was preoccupied with. Ugh. I prayed it would dry out and be okay but no luck. I was stuck with a Walmart Go phone which I dreaded until I could get a replacement. I still misplace this one but it’s getting a little better. 😉
How frustrating! I’m so sorry it wasn’t salvageable! 🙁
same thing happened to me a couple months ago.. but nobody returned it 🙁
glad you found yours..
🙁
A few months ago my 11 year old son found a phone in the shelf of a supermarket. We returned it and what a great feeling that was. Knowing that this can happen to me and how that person must feel. Jen, so sorry that yours wasn’t returned. Yesterday, I was picking up the kids from school and realized I didn’t have my phone with me. I always carry it with my keys in my hand. I was drinking a cold tea from a coffee shop and I had just finished it, so I tossed the cup in a 32 gal. trash can at school. I didn’t realize I didn’t have my phone until I was walking back to the parking lot. So began to pray silently as I walked. Needless to say, I left it in the car on the passenger seat. =) Crystal you are so right on, we do tend to take small things for granted when we think we’ve lost them. Thank you for your post!
My then 14 year old daughter and I were out run/walking to get her in shape for school sports … and she was timing us. She was ready to quit and I was being “encouraging mom.” I asked her to check how much time we had left and in the process she “dropped” my new phone on the ground cracking the screen…. she still feels guilty and I am resigned to the fact that me really cool new phone was “thown” to the ground and broken… I expect we BOTH learned an important lesson ; ) I think we may be talking about that one for years to come … thanks MOM for reminding me that stuff is replaceable – people are not.
Sometimes the screens can be changed out! My kids shattered the back go my iPhone and it was replaced in less than 5 minutes at an apple store. I think it was 25$
Thank you for the tip on the screens being able to be changed out. Good to know, though I hope I don’t need to use it!
If your iPhone (or IPod touch, in my case) isn’t under any warranty or plan, you can also use a company called iCracked.com. I actually dropped and cracked the screen of my 9 mo old IPod touch – better me than the kiddos though I suppose – earlier this summer. I was very upset because I really couldn’t justify replacing it. I found this company, iCracked.com, they have local techs you can meet that can replace your screen on the spot or you can mail the phone/iPod touch in to them for repairs. I mailed it and it was $99 (free shipping back) and it is truly like brand new still 4 months later. I am a military spouse and my husband is deployed so I opted not to meet someone with my small children in tow, but I think it is a bit cheaper if you use one of their service techs.
$99!!
You can get a kit on amazon sod about $30 and do it yourself. There is an even cheaper one but it is a lot more complicated. My husband switched the screen out easily.
Yes, I know it was a bit more expensive than the DIY kits, in fact this company will also sell you DIY, but if you damage the wifi antenna on the IPOD it creates a whole other set of problems. I am not a techie and since my husband is deployed and I have many, many other things on my plate, I went ahead with it. Sometimes if you aren’t tech savvy, it’s worth the extra money to save sanity! I would have been very worried about causing more damage than the actual repair. I didn’t mean to imply this was the only option by any means – just helping provide another one for someone who might not be aware.
Hooray! So glad you found it! I hate looking for things. It is so annoying to have something missing plus the wasted time of hunting. And there are still a lot of super great people! I recently saw someone pick up a wallet that was laying right inside the entrance of Granite City on a bench and hand it to the hostess and tell her that someone had left it there.
It always makes me so happy to see/experience people showing integrity! It provided a great opportunity to talk to our children tonight about how these people chose to do the right thing and how our choices — good or bad — directly effect others.