This is very lengthy but it was a very interesting way to spend last Friday evening:
My brother and I several years ago
I got an unexpected phone call from a lady that lived in a very, very rural area in the NC mountains last Friday afternoon. She left me a voice mail message as I was away from my phone at the time. Since she didn't talk with me she also called my two sisters. She said that she found a mobile phone lying in a gravel road near her home and it looked like it might belong to my brother. She looked at the screen and navigated to the emergency/medical link and our names and numbers came up. She was calling to let us know that she had the phone and thought the owner might like to have it back. She lived about 2 hours away from where my brother lives.
My brother is single, does not have a house phone and also rides bikes. In fact, while he is 11-12 years younger than me, he got me into cycling. When she told me what gravel road she found the phone on I knew exactly what route he was riding. However we didn't have any way to get in touch with my brother to know for sure. My sisters thought the worst and started calling area hospitals and the sheriffs office to see if they had any reports of him being injured and getting medical care. This area is very remote and my sisters were worried that if he'd crashed he might be lying unconscious off the side of the road. I felt sure the phone as fallen off of him or his bike but until we were able to talk with him we really just didn't know what was going on.
We called where he works and they confirmed that he was not at work that day. They got concerned and sent another employee to his house. They saw that one of this two vehicles was not at his house and they left him a note to contact me when he got home.My brother is a very rigorous about following a routine that he likes. Knowing that I knew there was a pizza restaurant that he really liked stopping on his way back home from a ride up that way. I called the restaurant and explained to the young lady about the missing phone and if my brother came into the restaurant to please have him call me. They didn't know him but I gave them his name in hopes that if he stopped there he would know his phone had been found and could go back to this lady's house and get his phone.
It was getting late and dark and we still hadn't heard from him. I was close to getting the car to ride up that way to see if I could track him down. I started to think if I knew anyone that lived in that area.
A couple weeks ago I had breakfast with a 94 year old widower in our church. I asked him about his family, where he grew up etc. I recalled that he grew up on a dairy farm about 4-5 miles away from a church parking lot where we parked to ride those gravel roads. He told me that his kin folks still had and worked the dairy farm. I did an internet search and lo and behold the name of the dairy farm came up.........and there was also a phone number!!! I called the number and someone actually answered!!!I gave my story to this very sweet lady about knowing their relative that grew up on the farm, the phone that was found, not hearing from my brother etc. I asked if they would mind driving over to the church to see if my brothers car was still there. If his car was there then we needed to start searching for him. She sensed the urgency and had her husband drive over the church and thankfully his car was NOT there.
That was a relief.In the mean time I realized that my wife was in the mountains and was going to be headed back to the Charlotte area soon. She would be going within 10 miles of where the lady lived that had found my brothers phone. So after several more calls I arranged for my wife to meet her at an old grist mill way off the beaten path. They both arrived as planned and my wife was able to get the phone.They both arrived as planned and my wife was able to get the phone.We finally heard from my brother after he got home later that evening. After he finished the ride he discovered his phone was missing. He had been riding in his vehicle back tracking the route for two hours trying to find his phone. After I'd explained all we had done His comment to me was "If she had left the phone in the road I would have found it"!?!?!?!?!?!?!? That's my brother........He had bought a new bento bag for his top tube and had put the phone in it. Apparently the phone had bounced out going down a fast bumpy section of the gravel road. The good news was he could pick it up the next morning at my house on his way to a College football game. When he came by I showed him my Quad Lock for my phone and how great it keeps a phone out in front of you on the bars. He was running Strava and looked at there the route lines started doubling back from it being a vehicle when found and we knew the exact spot where it had jumped out of the bag.Lessons learned: Always let someone know where you're riding, put good contact information in your phone like he did and make sure your phone is secure!!!