Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
DRAPER — A phone and wallet were lost and found, all thanks to an app.
Darvell Hunt said it started at a gas station in Draper.
"I got my gas. I have a combination iPhone wallet case and I left my wallet on the back of my car as I was gassing up. I took off and didn't realize at all that I had left it," he said.
Once at work, Hunt realized it was gone, pulled out his iPad and turned on the "Find my iPhone" app.
"I jumped in my car and ran back down there. About the same time I got there I could tell by my iPhone app that it had started (moving) north," he said.
Somebody had picked up the wallet and phone from the gas station and taken off. Hunt called police and gave them his iPad.
"The icon from my phone was moving so I said, ‘Hey, take my iPad. It's tracking it and you can follow that signal and you can find out where they are going,' " he said.
I said, 'Hey, take my iPad. It's tracking it and you can follow that signal.
–Darvell Hunt
Hunt returned to work and logged into iCloud to track both his iPad with the police and his iPhone with the thief.
"It was kind of like a cat and mouse game. You see this iPhone going around on these different streets and right behind it -- sometimes close, sometimes further away -- you could see the icon for my iPad," he said.
"With the help of our detective division they were able to track that phone through the Salt Lake City area," said Sgt. Chad Carpenter of the Draper Police Department. "A person had actually picked it up and was on the way to work and hadn't had the chance to call police yet."
It turns out somebody stole the wallet and phone and apparently tossed it to the side of the road when they realized that it was being tracked. A bus driver picked it up and kept it while he drove all over town on his route.
Police eventually stopped the bus and began checking passengers when the bus driver told them that he had found the wallet and iPhone and hadn't had time to call the owner.
The phone is in bad shape. But it, along with the wallet, is back in Hunt's possession.
