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Police officer uses Find My iPhone to track and save woman stranded in 500-foot ravine

A San Jose police officer used Apple’s Find My iPhone service to track down and rescue Melissa Vasquez, a woman who had been trapped in a 500-foot South Bay ravine for 17 hours. According to a report by KGO-TV, officer David Cameron is to thank for locating the stranded driver. After Vasquez was involved in a car accident, OnStar reported her location to the police, but they were unable to find any evidence of the car or driver.

When Cameron, who says he’s known around his department for being a bit of a “tech geek,” searched her house, he found her iPad and realized that he could use Find My iPhone to locate Vasquez’s cell phone. Vasquez’s tablet was locked using a passcode, but it took Cameron only three guesses to figure out the code and gain access to Find My iPhone.

From there it took only 20 minutes for police to track down Vasquez and begin the process of airlifting her to a nearby hospital.

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Comments

  1. PMZanetti - 10 years ago

    What a story. Police officer broke the law and violated her privacy….to save her life. Has unsolvable controversy written all over it.

    • sonicsoundvw - 10 years ago

      There is that, and then there is, don’t use a passcode thats associated with personal information, birthdate/street number/relatives birthdate ect..

      • PMZanetti - 10 years ago

        Right, but if she hasn’t done exactly that…she might be dead now instead. What a conundrum.

    • luckydcxx - 10 years ago

      In an in an exigent emergency situation to preserve human life, your right to privacy is out the window. Sorry to break the news to you.

  2. chasinvictoria - 10 years ago

    I assume (since it isn’t mentioned in the report) that Vasquez was hurt to the point where she was unable to use her cell phone to simply report her own location. I’m troubled by some aspects of this story, but glad she was found and is getting medical attention.

  3. Harvey立峰 Chen - 10 years ago

    As I knew, I need to enter the PW of my appleID for using find my iPhone app to lock the position of related iOS devices.
    I think the 4 digits PW on turn-on page is easy, the hard part is the PW of appleID.
    I was just wondering how the police officer did this, it’s not that easy to guess somebody’s PW of appleID.
    Or I can do any setting to bypass this???

    • Charles-Antoine Marcotte - 10 years ago

      Actually you can bypass this AppleID PW by simply enabling the 4 digits PW on turn-on page :)

      • Harvey立峰 Chen - 10 years ago

        I never setup the 4 digits thing on my 4s….
        It’s true that I don’t need to do the key-in using FMI on my iphone6, now the police may need my finger…

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