Dude, where’s my phone?

Cyber-sleuthing meets real life in a game of technological chicken

All I wanted to do on my 29th birthday was play my own music, drink beer, and not have to clean up.

I reached out to my friends at The Fur Shop, at 520 E. Third Street, a divey kind of place that I knew could fulfill my requirements. They have a room upstairs, and they said that as long as I could bring my own speakers, the room was mine. So began the ad-hock celebration of the last year of my 20s.

There was the Single Ladies dance with my long-time girlfriends. There was “Adult Jenga,” when my friends stacked chairs, tables, and cushions until they reached the ceiling.

There was the theft of my cell phone from the bar’s bathroom. There was me prying my stolen phone from the hands of a thief and walking away, vindicated and unscathed.

Sitting here sober, I tell you—don’t do what I did. In retrospect, it was really unsafe. Did it feel amazing? Yes. Did it feel like I was sticking it to every thief who has ever taken something from me—my first iPod, my car window, my husband’s scooter, my car manual, multiple car chargers? Absolutely.

When the Jenga tower had fallen for the last time, I decided to take one last trip to the bathroom. I noticed my friend was inside, barefoot. “Uh oh, I must’ve left them upstairs!” she mumbled about her shoes, partied out.

“I’ll get them!” I said. I raced out. I left my phone on the toilet paper dispenser in the second stall.

“Get out! Get out!” The calls from the bartenders were getting more aggressive. I returned to my friend with the shoes. It wasn’t until we got to the car that I realized I’d lost my phone. I was overly emotional (could I blame the circumstances?) and already in tears when I went to look for it.

I slipped stealthily back into the bar, but the search was fruitless. My phone was gone. It was sure to show up on Craigslist the next day for the highest bidder, I thought, completely wiped of all my data.

In the car, my valiant husband reminded me that we had brought my laptop—something I would normally never do, but since I was “DJing,” I brought it to play the night’s soundtrack. “Pull up Find My iPhone!” he said, urging me to use the app that allows another iOS device to locate one’s phone. I connected to the bar’s WiFi from the car. I pulled up the app; I saw a blinking green dot. That dot was my phone. “Last located, 14th and Peoria, 1 minute ago.”

“Whataburger,” I said, certain.

I had three options: play a sound, turn on lost mode, or erase the phone. I activated lost mode, which prompted me to enter a “recovery phone number.” I put in my husband’s digits, in case the thief had a change of heart over his or her onion rings and ditched the phone.

We pulled up to Whataburger. My husband couldn’t pull fully into the parking space before I was out of the car. I knew my phone was inside.

I stopped at a table of young women who were clearly sorry to leave club lighting for the full-on fluorescents of Whataburger. Their squinty eyes and running eyeliner stared up at me in confusion. “Did any of you find a phone?” I asked them. One of them searched her purse. My heart jumped. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding!

“No, my phone’s right here,” she said. Facepalm.

I walked to the next table, and the next. Nothing.

Then, I turned full circle to a table of three. An older couple—the gentleman probably rode up on a Harley, his leather vest and long gray ponytail both adorned with leather ties, and the woman next to him with hair the color of ketchup—were with a young man. I had the strange feeling that I’d interrupted a transaction of some kind. The younger man looked at me apologetically. The older man held my phone toward the ceiling, as if holding it up higher would improve his ability to figure out how to use it.

Without thinking, I grabbed the phone from his hands. He tugged a little, but he let go.

“Oh, is that yours?” he slurred.

“Yes,” I said, a little louder than I meant to.

“I found that in the bathroom at The Fur Shop,” the woman said, her voice as big as a 19-year-old Kappa Gamma pledge’s. “I wanted to call you, but I realized I couldn’t because I have your phone.”