An Apple iPhone spent six months in the bottom of a lake in British Columbia before a diver rescued the device and turned it over to its rightful owner in working condition. According to the CBC, the soggy but still alive handset was found by Clayton Helkenberg and wife Heather; the pair enjoy diving to the bottom of lakes to find lost objects and clean up after others. On a recent trip, Clayton found a flip phone on the bottom of the lake while Heather did better; she found an iPhone 11.
The iPhone belonged to one Fatemeh Ghodsi who had lost the device in September while riding on a bumper boat. She explained what happened to her phone, “I was in a situation where I kind of lost balance and dropped it in the water.” The staff at the water park told her that it would be impossible to find in such deep water. So, she said, “Distressed and in tears, we went back to Vancouver just kind of hopeless,” Fatemeh bought a new phone, but hadn’t backed up photos, contacts and other data (let that be a warning to you to back up your data often!).
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Heather Helkenberg discovers Fatemah Ghodsi’s Appple iPhone 11 at the bottom of a lake where it was lying for six months
The flip phone found by Clayton was severely damaged, but as for the iPhone 11, “I took it home, cleaned the dirt off of it and it just turned right on, so it was pretty amazing.” After taking the SIM card out and putting it in another phone to get the iPhone owner’s phone number, he called Ghodsi who at first thought that she was being pranked by friends. She later gave an update on the condition of her iPhone 11. She notes that the microphone on the iPhone 11 is broken and the speaker sounds weird. but everything else is working perfectly. Still amazed by the return of her phone, Ghodsi stated, “I was in complete shock, initially to start with. It was kind of like a zombie phone coming back to me, because I’d totally made peace with it being gone.”
We should point out that the Helkenberg’s do not ask for one penny when they reunite someone with their lost property. Last year Clayton found more than a hundred pairs of sunglasses, 26 cellphones and two GoPro cameras. This year, he has recovered 35 pairs of sunglasses, five handsets and one GoPro.
