My daughter set her phone down in the shoe department of a local store last night. Absent minded (like we've all been at times) she walked away without it and left the store.
These days, it doesn't take long for a young woman to realize that her phone is missing. Within 15 minutes she was back in the store asking if a pink iPhone 5c had been turned in. The answer was no.
"Find iPhone" is now our favorite free application ever. Once my daughter was back at home, we downloaded it to my iPad. By simply putting in her Apple ID, a map showed exactly where the phone was located. Fortunately the phone was left powered on by whoever had it. This is required for the app to work. We watched the image of a smartphone moving along a map from a local grocery store to a neighborhood in Tempe about 5 miles away.
I suppose filing a police report and waiting at home for them to take care of things would have been the best choice. Maybe I did not want to see that phone move somewhere else or disappear from the screen. Maybe I really really don't like someone taking something of mine and getting away with it. Maybe I just needed a little improvised stake-out to liven up my weekend night.
We hopped in her car and headed toward Tempe.
For about 90 minutes we waited outside the house displayed on the iPad map. Meantime, I was able to report the phone stolen and request the police. It was a Saturday night and I knew real emergency calls would get priority. But eventually two young, polite Tempe police officers showed up. I showed them my iPad screen and the latest update of where the phone was.
The very happy ending to all this is that we got the phone back. It was in the house displayed on the iPad. The police had a long conversation in front of the house with the occupants and finally a pink phone turned up in the hands of two 13 year old girls inside. The girls had found it in the store where my daughter lost it. Not turning it in to a manager was their mistake. So was leaving it powered on.
I didn't ask for too much further information after the police gave their simple explanation for how they got it out of the house. "Just good police work" was the answer, with a smile. We had the option to press charges, but chose not too.
It's really hard to find better free entertainment for a Saturday night than getting back something valuable you thought was lost. The improvised stake-out was a bonus. And I think my daughter sort of enjoyed having a couple of young policemen save her day.
