Dude, Where’s my iPhone
A story on how GPS technology and Service economy helped us recently. My wife, Victoria recently lost her iPhone on Bart (a primary public transit train in SF bay area) a few days back, along with her Driver License and Credit Cards which were inside the case.
Thanks to iCloud’s Find my Phone feature, we knew it was on a train parked at Richmond train depot. But there are a dozen trains parked at the depot overnight and you can’t just go and search them. We pleaded with the Richmond station agents to contact folks at the depot to search for our phone, but to no avail. We were told that they can only search the train if we know the exact train number and exact car number. Now who ever notices the car number of a Bart when they enter it? And to make this even more interesting: Bart car numbers are pretty randomly assigned even in one train, i.e., you may find a 1125 car connected to a 5218 and so on. And guess what, there’s no train numbers on Bart!
I was exasperated. We knew the phone’s location but couldn’t get it. Until a friendlier station agent mentioned: “the train you were on, will make its way back from Richmond to SF. If you want to get on it, you can go search it yourself”. And that I did. I searched quickly through 8 cars but the iPhone didn’t turn up. For the next train coming out of Richmond depot, I asked my wife, Victoria who was back home, to remotely sound the phone while I searched. That train didn’t have the phone either. I was getting tired of searching the whole train. Plus I had to ride it to next stop of El Cerrito and then catch the reverse train, that made it a good 30–45 mins to search one train. For this third train, I asked her to see if iCloud thought the iPhone was moving south from the depot to Richmond station and only if it was, then I’d jump on to that train. GPS inaccuracies led us to believe it was moving southbound for that short distance, and so I did search this third train as well. But the phone didn’t turn up.
We went to bed late that night convinced that we’d lost the phone forever. For sure someone would find the phone in the morning and if (s)he were honest would return it, but there was always the possibility that they won’t.
Next morning though on waking up, we found that the iPhone had made 3 round trips from Richmond to SFO. iCloud had sent my wife a flurry of emails about its changing location all morning. And no one had found it yet!
I never give up, never have. Twenty years ago, I had once found my lost luggage in the middle of rural India with no cell phones or internet to help via some old style detective work. I’ll save that story for another post. But this day, I wanted to find that phone. Victoria was pretty downtrodden. I wished I could keep riding trains all day until I could find it for her. But I had a morning chock-a-block full of meetings starting with a 10 am 1:1 with my boss. Plus this was a race against time and dying battery. Its then I decided why not hire someone to do this?
I hired a TaskRabbit errand guy to do exactly that. I posted the following task: “We lost our iPhone on Bart. We need someone to ride bart and find it. We are tracking it via GPS and can tell you which train it is on and approximately which seat in every car. Needs to be done today within next 4 hrs before battery dies out”. After posting it, for a moment I felt silly: would anyone even respond to this task?
Turns out someone did take up the job. I asked our Task Rabbit, Geoffrey to show up at the nearest Bart station in SF (24th St). The iPhone was in Berkeley at that time and was moving south towards SF. Then when the phone reached 12th Street, Oakland, I let him know the train’s location. And asked him to find out when that train would reach him. Since there are trains coming in from Oakland to SF every 7 minutes, it was quite important he got on the right train. Geoffrey estimated the train would reach him in 12 minutes. A nervous 12 minutes ensued.
At last, Geoffrey texted to let me know that he was on the train. We then confirmed he was on the right train by matching the phone’s trajectory to his. He was hesitant to search the train while there were people on board. I couldn’t blame him for that. So he rode it till its last stop in SFO. And then began his search. Suspense.
Geoffrey (11:04 AM): What color is the phone case?
Me (11:05 AM): Red. It could have fallen and stuck under seat. In every pair of 4 seats, look only on the 1 seat that is aisle seat and faces doors.
Me (11:08 AM): Are you headed to airport now?
Geoffrey (11:09 AM): Yes
Me (11:09 AM): When you start looking again, I can play a sound on the phone
Me (11:10 AM): Looks like you just reached end of the line
Geoffrey (11:10 AM): I’m looking now
Me (11:11 AM): Playing sound
Geoffrey (11:11 AM): Play it again
Me (11:12 AM): Playing constantly
Geoffrey (11:16 AM): Found it!
Me: (11:16 AM) You rock! Thank you!!
Nailed it. That beauty was hiding underneath the seat cover, and had survived at least 6 round trips from Richmond to SFO without any passenger noticing it!
I immediately called my wife on our landline, who went giddy with delight. This cost us 83$ for 2 hrs of sleuthing by our TaskRabbit. A happy wife, and an amazing story for lifetime: priceless.
