Several years ago my phone fell out of my pocket while I was riding a bike to work . I did not have an emergency contact setup on my phone (lesson learned!) but I had only just started using Signal on my phone luckily recalled that I had not yet made the new incoming messages private on the Lock Screen, so I had my coworker send myself a Signal message to give him a call back if someone found the phone. And wow a good samaritan replied back and provided the rendezvous address and I got my phone back with a $60 finders fee I promised.
Funny story also my Strava was on the whole time so I saw my Strava journey essentially take a turn at one point and make its way to a new specific location haha. This was all before "Find My Iphone" and all but nevertheless sending Strava beacons still seems like a good idea because of this !
A few years later, I ended up finding someone's phone in a WeWork bathroom where I worked and it was unlocked! I left the phone there thinking in hindsight Wework is a pretty safe place but I locked it for them at least just in case. Soon after actually my friend or myself (don't remember who) found a phone in a bathroom stall at a restaurant we were at. We saw the person coming back panicking and knew it was him right away, so that was a quick phone reunion.
At this point it started to feel like a pattern of some kind.
Haha. And sure enough, last year I found someone's phone in a bike lane while I was biking.
This one was easy. I was looking around me and I see about a half block away someone is walking their bike staring at the ground. So they got their phone back screen uncracked safely. And haha, I later looked up https://m.soundcloud.com/rogueuk/rogue-atlantic that song on their phone and indeed I think I would have totally lost my phone had I been listening to such an upbeat track!
Just yesterday I got one more karma point!
Found another phone in a bike lane yesterday! It was pretty windy and per the photo below, 29F so holding the phone was interesting for the hands haha, because after hanging around in the area for what felt like 10 minutes of finding this , trying to text a random contact that showed up on the phone screen But 12 minutes in after I had already started biking again, luckily the "Lost iPhone" beepery started and I had a chance to chat with the emergency contact. So I was able to reunite one more phone shortly after.
At this point I think my phone karma is more or less paid off 😂, but nevertheless I will keep my eyes open, especially in those bathroom stalls and bike lanes!
