In Israel, Find My iPad feature Gets the Goods, Impresses Police

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car with window smashed
Smashed Window on Victim's Car (Image: Jacob Dayan)

We’ve reported a number of times about how Apple’s Find my iPad (or iPhone) feature has helped retrieve multiple lost or stolen iDevices. This week reader Jacob Dayan from Israel wrote to tell us his own successful, and moderately harrowing, story about getting his iPad back when he returned to his car to find his window smashed and a bag of items missing. From his blog:

“When I call my wife to tell her the bad news, it hits me. I can find my iPad! I ask my daughter Vered to log in to my MobileMe accounts, and within few minutes I hear the good news – the blue dot is active, my iPad is on the map! I start the chase, and Vered instructs me from remote. “Turn left … they are heading to the other cemetery… they are now approaching Rt 40..”.

Dayan follows the thief for 10 miles, until his daughter reports that the iPad is inside an apartment building.


He contacts the police several times, each time receiving the same (sage) advice to stop the chase immediately and come to the police station to file a complaint. Undeterred – and motivated – Dayan eventually convinces the police to assist and they send two officers out to his location.

Once they are inside the building, his daughter activates the Alarm via Find My iPad. The cops hear the sound and begin knocking on apartment doors. A few moments later Vered reports that the iPad is out of the building again, it was thrown out the window. Jacob quickly finds it, undamaged, in some bushes.

“The policewoman is shocked. She calls her supervisor to tell him that the unbelievable just happened. The story is real. This lunatic person, that claimed that the iPad is in this site, is correct. The iPad, stolen 10 miles away, is here. BTW – the police left the site, they can not break into the apartments without a warrant.

“They did ask me for a demo of the iPad, though.”

Full Story: Stolen iPad retrieved in 90 min after 10 mile chase. Result: iPad: 1, Police: 0

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