How I Caught a Thief Using my iPhone

This weekend my fiancé and I experienced that nightmare situation familiar to many a digital native...a missing iPhone.

Cry havoc! How would we survive?

My partner’s phone had disappeared during a freak supermarket evacuation — yes, really — that’s another story.

Initially, we thought he may have dropped the phone, but when I logged onto ‘find my iPhone’ and checked its location, the phone was moving away from us and towards Burger King!

Now iPhones are clever gadgets, but I’ve never seen one drive a car nor eat a burger…someone had pilfered our phone.

One thing this thief didn’t expect…me giving chase.

But let’s start at the beginning because it is a very good place to start…

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The supermarket, Sainsbury’s evacuated us during a flash storm. As the building collapsed around us and water flooded in, people panicked. Covid or not, we bunched together and ran for the exit. Luckily, everyone escaped and no one was harmed, but upon returning to our campervan, we discovered that my fiancé’s phone was gone.

We scoured the car park, spoke to shop attendants and passers-by but the phone couldn’t be found.

Then I remembered that we had set up location sharing on our devices after I’d written a true-crime article about a woman whose location sharing had saved her life.

I hit the app and was shocked to see that the phone was on the move…it was currently waiting for its order in the Burger King drive-thru.

We tried calling the phone and sure enough, someone answered.

We heard breathing and background car noise, but couldn’t get the person to speak. We politely asked again and again if they’d found a phone and if they could hear us. Nothing.

They stopped answering after a couple of calls.

We hopped into our campervan and headed to the burger joint. Before we arrived, the phone moved again, this time heading out of town.

We gave chase and soon arrived at a large Walmart.

Upon entering, we spoke with the security staff who were helpful and the store staff also spoke with us as we hung out by the self-service checkouts. We had no plan really, just see if we could spot someone trying to pay with our phone. The case was really distinctive and we felt certain it would be noticeable to anyone looking.

One staff member suggested that we log on to iCloud and activate the phone’s sound system. This emergency feature allows you to force your phone to make a sound, even if it’s on silent or switched off.

Inside of iCloud, you can force your phone to play a sound if it is lost.

We roamed the aisles, listening for the phone alarm.

Suddenly, a young check-out assistant signaled us…he’d apprehended the thief having heard the phone alarm in his pocket.

Face to Face with the thief

The 60-year-old man in front of me wasn’t what I’d expected at all. Instantly, I felt very sad and sorry for him.

My sympathy wained however when he insisted that we prove to him that the phone he had concealed in his pocket (that was still sounding an alarm), was indeed our phone.

The man seemed reluctant to show us the phone as we explained that we’d ‘lost’ it in Sainsbury's.

He demanded we tell him the make and model of the phone to prove it was ours.

After some moments, he produced the phone…

The case was missing. The phone was completely plain and unidentifiable.

It took one look at my fiance and opened. It was our phone.

Now a little on the back foot, the man launched into his strange story…

According to him, he’d found the phone in Sainsbury's and didn’t want to hand it in to the staff there because he thought his son would know what to do with a lost phone, better than they would. He’d removed the case to see if there was an address inside of it but had then left the case in his car which was parked too far away to walk to. He couldn’t explain why he’d not spoken to us when we called. He was definitely going to hand it in but wanted to give it to his son first because he knew about phones.

Feeling Sad for a Thief*

I’m not sure how the man got my fiancé’s phone. *Did he find it as he’d described? Was he simply really confused and didn’t know what to do?

I felt sad for him. But I couldn’t pinpoint why.

Then it struck me that I was sad for him because I do believe that he intended to keep the phone and attempt to get some money for it.

I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the bit that’s stuck with me is that he chose to remove the phone’s distinctive case.

I don’t believe that he’d remove and discard the case but keep the phone in his pocket, if he had honest intentions.

If he intended to return the phone, surely he’d return the case too? Therefore, he’d have kept the two items together.

If there’s a reasonable explanation for this that I simply haven’t thought of, I’d love to hear it.

I’d love to understand how a man finds a phone, answers it but doesn’t speak, removes the case, leaves the scene where he found it without handing it in yet intended to do the right thing?

It makes me sad that an older man felt the need to cash in on our loss.

Grateful for the Good-Guys

So many people tried to help us find the phone.

Literally, dozens of people contributed to the return of that iPhone — the guy that jump-started the campervan, the Walmart team, the strangers that walked the car park where we initially thought the phone was dropped.

Everyone, but the old man, tried to help us that day.

That’s the part of this story that I’ll remember — most of the people in it were great humans and we are super grateful to them…

and to Apple for inventing such cool emergency features.