Fatima Qudsi was skeptical at first when she received a text from someone saying she had found her phone almost six months after losing it in Harrison Lake.
Qudsi, who lives in Vancouver, was confused and thought that a friend of her might be joking with her. But she is quickly satisfied and makes a trip to Chilliwack to retrieve the phone, which still works wonderfully.
Clayton Hilkenberg and his wife Heather find their lost iPhone 11 while scanning the lake bottom under Harrison Lake Waterpark – part of a hobby that involves uncovering the strange treasure, but often a lot of the trash gets cleaned up.
Qudsi dropped the phone in the water in early September, as she boarded the bumper boats – photos obtained from the phone show she was still smiling moments before the crash.
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“I was in a situation where I kind of lost my balance and threw him into the water,” she said, adding that the water park staff had convinced her that he would be impossible to find the phone in deep water.
“We came back to Vancouver in a state of sadness and tears, and we were a bit desperate,” Qudsi said.
Soon she bought a new phone and accepted the missing photos, contacts, and other personal information that had not been backed up.
YouTube diver
Helkenberg has been snorkeling, swimming and diving for years, but in early 2020 – with extra time after being unloaded – he started to put more effort into searching for lost items in the area. water, as well as for cleaning up garbage. Tasks.
At one point, he goes on a diving mission with his friends and his wife. He even created a YouTube channel documenting his findings.
Last year, he found over a hundred pairs of sunglasses, 26 cell phones and two GoPro cameras. This year, I have already counted 35 pairs of sunglasses, five phones and a GoPro.
His underwater work has even attracted some Media attention, Including a report He and his friends pulled 359 kilograms of garbage from Lake Caltos Earlier this year.
This week was at Harrison Lake – the water is a lot shallower now than it was in the summer, and according to Hilkenberg, it’s pretty clear. A badly damaged flip phone was found, but Heather Hilkenberg noticed Godsey’s iPhone.
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“It just turned on”
Clayton Helkenberg said he usually puts the phones in a silica container to dry them out, but good luck with the iPhone 11s.
He said, “I took it home, cleaned it up of the dirt and it lit up right, so that was so cool.”
I took out the SIM card and put it in another phone to find the phone number and contact Qudsi.
She said: “I was completely in shock at first. It was like a zombie phone coming back to me, because I had totally come to terms with his leaving. ”
Qudsi said the microphone is broken and the speaker looks strange, but everything else is in perfect condition; Battery health remains at 96%.
She is grateful for getting the phone back and is inspired by the fact that Helkenberg strives to reunite people with lost valuables and asks for nothing in return. But the experience made Qudsi more impressed with his job of cleaning up the trash, saying it was a reminder to keep our water clean.
“It gives me a lot of hope for the good,” she said.
As for the next time you get on the bumper boats? Qudsi said she would leave her phone and valuables on the beach or keep them safely in her pocket.
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