So I was an idiot (I make up for it) and left my iPhone at the movies on Monday night – the last show and I was the last out of the theater. By the way, “The American sucks”!

The little guy wasn't where I'd expected him to be. Obviously, I had a big problem with that.

I realized that I forgot my phone the next morning but I wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t in the house somewhere – it wouldn’t be the first time I’d misplaced something, thought it was lost, only to find it in the couch cushions. I had an appointment at our new office that I couldn’t miss but before I left the house, I tried to locate the phone using “Find my iPhone” through Me.com. Nothing – no location found! Next I tried to ‘Ping’ the phone which does two things. First, it causes the phone to emit a loud tone for two minutes that can’t be turned off unless the phone is unlocked. Second, the phone confirms it’s playing the tone by sending an email. The problem was, I didn’t get the email confirmation. I figured the phone was dead or turned off and probably sitting in the theaters safe or even still in the cup holder.

So I went to the office, met the vendor and then headed up to the movie theater around 11:15am. When I got there I found a sign saying that the theater didn’t open until 12:30pm. Crap! There was a Barnie’s coffee shop so I decided to grab my laptop and do some work until the theater opened.

Simulated "found' page from my iPad with the important points. Click for full size image.

My iPad was sitting on the passenger seat and as I was putting it in my bag a couple of emails came in. I decided to give them a quick look. Behold, a message from Me.com that my phone was now playing the tone so it must be on! I fired up the “find my iPhone” app and got a location. The problem was that the location wasn’t at the theater. It was about one half mile north at a small motel. Wrut wrow shaggy!

Over the next few minutes I repeated the process of having my phone ‘found’ and duplicated the initial results – my iPhone wasn’t at the theater. Someone moved it!

Without thinking about it for another second, I headed north to the motel to reclaim my phone. Yes, I should have taken backup or contacted the cops but I was on a roll. Besides, I had a Durango and an iPad – Mickey Spillane wasn’t as set up as I was!

Arriving at the motel I found two men cleaning up the parking lot. I called one over to the truck and asked him if he cleaned the Epic theater. He replied no but, “the two Mexican guys in 11 are cleaners and walk that way every night and comeback after 3:00am”. Bingo!

I asked if they were around and my new friend said that one of the men had just walked around the back of the motel with his laundry. “Can you take me back there?”, I asked.

“Sure, we don’t like those two guys anyway”, he said. I grinned.

So there I go, walking back behind a motel on a dirt path with a stranger in pursuit of my ‘relocated’ iPhone. I thought, “maybe I should have a gun for this?”. Hmmmm.

There he was, “The Mexican”, sitting in a lawn chair with a phone and listening to music. I walked right up to him and said, “Give me the phone”. He did just that without hesitation. The problem was it wasn’t my phone.

I told him that this wasn’t what I was looking for and that I knew he cleaned the Epic theater last night and ‘found’ an iPhone in theater 9. He initially denied it. I persisted.

“Listen, this can go two ways. You can give me my phone and I’ll walk away or I call the cops and they’ll toss your room.” Actually, I had no idea what the cops would do but it sounded good at the time. Your tone is everything. Sound confident and that’s how you’ll appear. I didn’t have to fake this though. I was pissed and it showed.

“I don’t have your phone”, he said in broken English. “Does your friend have it?”, I asked. “Ummmmm. Maybe”, he replied. “Take me to your friend!”.

So back on the dirt path we go to room 11. He opens the door and there are 4 more men sitting in the room watching TV. Numerous phones were sitting on the TV and the dresser from what I could see. “The Mexican” says something in Spanish to a guy laying on the bed who leans forward to see me standing in the door way. Without breaking eye contact, he reached for my iPhone sitting on the nightstand by the bed and hands it to “The Mexican” who hands it to me. “We was [sic] going to turn it in”, he says. “BULLLLSHITTTT!”, I replied. “I doubt the movie theater policy is to have you take stuff home with you and bring it back the next day”. Blank stares from all 5 guys who were undoubtedly wondering how I showed up at their door less then 20 minutes after they turned on the phone.

As I backed out of the doorway, my friend was standing there giving me a thumbs up. He asked me how I found them as we got back to my truck. I showed him my iPad with the location still on the screen. He was amazed! I drove across the street to a mini-mart to check the phone out and get a $20 for my informant. After two minutes of inactivity, my phone locks and requires a 4 digit PIN to use the phone. Make 10 incorrect attempts to unlock the phone and it locks you out for 15 minutes. The phone still had 11 minutes of lockout on it meaning they were trying to get into the phone as I was arriving at their room. NICE!

After returning with the $20 for my informant, leaving him happy and smiling, I went back to the theater and told the manager about what happened. She said, “I guess we’ll be getting new cleaners”. I told her there were ‘lots of phones’ in that motel room. She promised to ask the cleaning companies manager about it.

So, what’s the takeaway on this?

First, if your going to ‘hit’ a room with 5 immigrant cleaners in it, tell someone where your going. Although they were small, I was seriously outnumbered and I didn’t have Chuck Norris with me.

Second, most modern phones with GPS have some sort of geo-location service. Buy it and make sure its turned on. I thought about canceling me.com before it renewed this past February to save the $99. I’m SO glad I didn’t.

Third, lock your phone! Say it with me, “I will lock my phone!”. As phones get more advanced, people are storing all sorts of personal information: contacts, passwords, pictures, bank account numbers, past text messages, etc. Look at the information on your phone and ask yourself if you would be ok with a complete stranger having access to it? That extra two seconds spent unlocking the phone each time you use it could be important one day. That day for me was Sept. 7th, 2010.

Finally, don’t be an idiot and leave your expensive phone in a movie theater so the cleaners will take it -  requiring a solo visit to motel room occupied with 5 immigrants.

Just sayin’.