‘Poop-soaked phone’ reunited with Montana owner after company pulls it from toilet vault
Losing your phone always stinks, but this time it really stunk — literally.
An unlucky phone owner dropped their iPhone into a toilet vault full of 1,000 gallons of poop at Holland Lake, and a Montana sanitation company took the time to pull it out, A-1 Sanitation said on Facebook.
“We pulled the phone out of a 1000g poop tank, wiped it with some Clorox wipes, set it outside in the sun to dry for a few days,” A-1 Sanitation said in a Facebook post last week. “Let’s see what happens.”
The company plugged it in, expecting it wouldn’t work at all. But the screen lit up after being at the bottom of a tank of poop for “who knows how long,” the company said.
“Let it charge for a bit... And held my breath while I pushed the power button..IT’S ALIVE!!” A-1 Sanitation said. “IT TURNED ON AND FUNCTIONS!!”
Employees at the sanitation company started the hunt for the owner. The lock screen had no information that would help the company help find the owner, so the workers visited Verizon, the phone’s carrier.
“They wouldn’t help and told me to either recycle it, or turn it in to the police. If a report was filled, it could be returned,” A-1 Sanitation said. “It fell in a poop tank, I doubt they were contacted.”
Then the company called Apple and gave it a serial number, but they couldn’t help contact the owner, according to the company.
Finally, the group tried to put the SIM card into a different phone and was able to get a name and phone number for the phone’s owner.
“Your poop-soaked phone is on its way home,” the company wrote.
The phone’s owner said the last place she saw her phone was in the toilet, so she was shocked to hear someone had found it, according to MTN News.
“She was pretty shocked that we actually ended up retrieving the phone and that it worked enough to get her information off of it,” Tanner Stevenson, one of the workers who found the phone, told MTN News.
The sanitation company nearly followed all the right steps for the phone to work. They waited before plugging the phone in, which one expert says is the best option.
“Do not charge it,” Gary Tan with DE iPhone repair, a San Francisco-based company, told Family Handyman. “Do not plug it in to see if it works. If it’s on, electricity will flow, it will touch the water that’s inside and that’s when your fry the (circuit) board.”
The best thing is to first place the phone in a warm dry place for a few days, according to Family Handyman. Some people suggest putting the phone in a bowl of uncooked rice to absorb moisture, but others worry that causes dust and starch to build up.