A Miracle. A small personal story.

Last week I lost my cell phone.

Yep.  And it’s an IPhone 5.  And it was unlocked.

What happened next was a miracle.

But first let me set the scene.  My wife and I were returning from Rochester, a town that is a five hour drive from our home in Dover NJ.  And since we started the day in Dover, ours was a long day of driving.

We were maybe 3 hours from home when we stopped at a rest stop on Interstate Highway 81, southbound at the NY/PA border.  

I don’t usually carry my cell phone.  If I take a long drive, it is with my wife – she does all the driving, and carries her Blackberry.  I rarely carry my cell phone, except when I commute to work, and then my phone lives in my brief case, and is turned off.  But on this day my wife asked me to bring my cell phone.  I don’t know why, but she did.  So I put it in my coat pocket and we embarked.  From time to time over a long day, I would pull my phone out to look at my emails, or check out Facebook; then I would turn it off, put it back in my pocket, and try to doze some more.  I didn’t pay much attention to my phone.

More scene setting.  I am a big guy, 6’3” and 220 lbs.  When I get in and out of a car lots of things ride up.  My keys often fall out of my pants.  Even my wallet falls out.  So it should come as no surprise that my cell phone would ride up too.  Sometime after 4pm I went for my phone and it was not in my pocket.  At first I assumed that I had just dropped it under my seat, but when we got to the next rest area, maybe 90 minutes from home, it wasn’t there.   So I had lost my phone. 

Wow.  Suddenly I felt the wave of panic and disappointment that comes when you get a terrible surprise.  My mood plunged and my mind raced through how I would recover from my mistake.  My first call would be to Verizon to block use of the phone, and then I wondered if I should buy a new smart phone or go back to the simple flip phone.  I had made an expensive mistake. 

The rest of the drive went quickly.  When we arrived home, I started looking for the contact number for Verizon and noticed that the message light on our landline was blinking.  Trying to avoid the inevitable (calling Verizon is never fun) I listened to the message.  A stranger was calling from my own cell phone (not locked, thank god) she said she would leave it at the desk in the Pennsylvania Welcome Center and I could pick it up there.

She did not leave the number of the rest stop.

I went on line and eventually figured out exactly which rest stop had my phone. I called, and someone was there to answer (they would close in a half hour, at 7pm).   She said that they would probably just send the phone to me, but I needed to speak to her supervisor… tomorrow.  So I did, and Laura said yes, she would mail my phone.  It happens frequently.  So I was not stupid, just ordinary.

The phone arrived on Thursday.  I have a box of candy to send to the folks at the rest stop. 

The woman who found my phone didn’t leave her name of phone number.  But I am thankful to her too.



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