STATESVILLE, N.C. — A Channel 9 reporter was able to recover her stolen phone this week using a find-my-phone app, and help from the newsroom and a Statesville police officer.
Tina Terry returned to the TV station after being on assignment in Statesville when she realized her mobile phone was not with her.
Using the app, she jumped on her computer in the newsroom and was able to locate the phone in Statesville near Simonton Road.
Terry wrote the address down and rushed back to Statesville to retrieve her phone. She also called Statesville police in order to report the phone missing and file a complaint.
Once she arrived in Statesville she enlisted the help of web producer Mark Schulman. He monitored the phone's movement with the Find My iPhone application and directed Terry toward the phone.
She ended up in front of the Statesville Activity Center but the application showed that the phone was in a wooded area behind the facility.
Terry noticed a man walking in the distance through that wooded area.
"Immediately I thought, that man has my phone," Terry said.
However, she didn't approach him. Statesville police returned her call and Officer Zack Johnson agreed to meet her at the recreation center.
"He arrived very quickly and for about 15 minutes we monitored Find My iPhone together," Terry said. "The app showed my phone was moving quickly from one location to another."
Johnson noticed that all of the locations were near the woods and seemed to follow a walking trail that runs throughout part of the city. Johnson decided to travel to the next location that the phone pinged at. It was in Statesville near the same trail he had mentioned earlier. He ran down that path and found a man who admitted to picking the phone up earlier in the day.
"I was elated and really moved by Officer Johnson's dedication," Terry said. "The technology helped track my phone but his willingness to go the extra mile is what brought it back to me."
Johnson told Terry that the man who had her phone met the same description as the person she'd spotted earlier that evening.