Utah Couple Recovers, Returns iPhone Missing For Four Years

AMERICAN FORK, Utah – Taylor Jones thought he would never see his iPhone again after he lost it while snowmobiling in American Fork Canyon in 2016.

“I were snowmobiling and I remember taking a picture with my phone and thought I put it back into my pocket,” Jones said.

Well, he did not put it in his jacket pocket. Instead, it dropped into greasy powder, never to be seen again. Or so he thought.

“To get that email four years after the fact, it was crazy,” he said.

He received an email this summer from a couple who had been hiking up Silver Lake Flats. They claimed to have recovered his iPhone and used the email attached to his Apple ID to contact him.

“We just saw this little dark object and it was covered in dirt. It was really dirty, then we were like, ‘whoa, it’s an iPhone,’” Tim Alberthsen said. “We thought somebody might want this, so we picked it up and took it back with us.”

The couple took it home, washed it up and eventually charged it.

“We plugged it in and powered it up and there was his email address right on there,” Rita Alberthsen said. “I emailed and said ‘hi, my husband found an iPhone while hiking that I believe belongs to you.’”

The couple connected with Jones and was finally able to return the old phone to him.

“The first thing I did was look at pictures and I found a bunch of pictures of my daughter,” Jones said. “It kind of gave me a snapshot of what my life was like during that time, it was almost like a time capsule from four years ago.”

It was an unplanned time capsule he said helped him reflect on what is truly important.

“I felt a little bit of relief because my life right now is not near as stressful,” he said.