Usually when Dallas dips into a river on the hunt for lost treasures, he finds predictable items like sunglasses and jewelry.
So the star of YouTube channel Man + River couldn’t help but get excited when he stumbled upon an iPhone X while exploring Arizona’s Salt River.
But Dallas was even more shocked when he realized that the iPhone still worked – and made it his mission to return the phone to its owner.
A YouTube star named Dallas, who runs the channel Man + River, couldn’t help but get excited when he found an iPhone X (pictured) while exploring Arizona’s Salt River
Dallas often finds sunglasses and jewelry during his treasure hunts. This was the first time he had ever found the $1,000 phone
Since the iPhone was not in a waterproof case, Dallas let it dry out for three days, immersing it in a tub of silicone beads and even using a hair dryer.
Then he put the phone on a charger, and held his breath. When it began to light up, even Dallas couldn’t believe his luck.
Dallas then took the phone’s SIM card and stuck it into his own phone so he could find the original owner’s phone number.
‘Some owners have a “backup phone” that they are using, but it has the same phone number,’ he explained on his YouTube page.
He sent a text to a number belonging to Alyssa King, asking if she had lost a phone recently.
Dallas was even more shocked when he realized that the iPhone still worked – and made it his mission to return the phone to its owner
Since the iPhone was not in a waterproof case, Dallas lets it dry out for three days, immersing it in a tub of silicone beads and even using a hair dryer
Dallas then filmed the next morning, when he received a call from Alyssa.
‘Hi, this is Dallas,’ he says in the clip. ‘Is this the lucky person who lost their phone?’
‘Yes, it is!’ Alyssa screams excitedly.
‘We do have your phone,’ Dallas tells her. ‘I tried to power it on and it works perfectly.’
‘It works?’ Alyssa exclaims. ‘That is the craziest thing ever!’
Alyssa, who lives in Florida, then reveals that her she lost her phone more than two weeks ago while on vacation.
‘We should make a commercial for Apple, that’s pretty impressive for an iPhone X,’ Dallas replies.
Alyssa then tells him that she is especially overjoyed with the news because the phone had photos from her newborn daughter’s first five months.
Then he puts it on a charger, and holds his breath. When the phone begins to light up, even Dallas can’t believe his luck
Dallas then took the phone’s SIM card and stuck it into his own phone so he could find the original owner’s phone number and give her a call
‘I had all her baby pictures on there and I did not back them up,’ Alyssa tells Dallas. ‘I was devastated.’
‘The fact that you found it, you completely turned my world upside down.’
When Alyssa offers to pay for shipping, Dallas assures her that everything will be taken care of.
‘This is the best part of my job,’ he says. ‘Finding the owners of these things and getting them back to you. I’m so glad this worked out.’
Dallas called Alyssa’s reaction the best he’s ever gotten since he began hunting for lost items.
‘I had a lot of fun with this one,’ he tells his viewers. ‘Alyssa was so easy to work with and so appreciative to get her phone back with all her pictures.’
He got into contact with Alyssa King (pictured), who revealed she had lost the phone while visiting Arizona from her native Florida to visit a friend
Alyssa was especially overjoyed with the news because the phone had photos from her newborn daughter’s first five months
Dallas, a free diver and scuba diver, has since posted the video to his YouTube channel, where it has been viewed more than 512,000 times.
Alyssa also posted about the experience on her Facebook page, revealing she had lost the phone while tubing down the river with a friend she was visiting in Arizona.
‘It was an absolute blast and the scenery was like something out of a movie,’ Alyssa wrote.
‘However, some rapids sprung upon us out of nowhere and my phone (which I shouldn’t have brought) went flying out of the plastic bag I had it in and sunk to the bottom of the river.’
Alyssa said she was ‘stunned, astounded, and absolutely blown away’ when Dallas called to say he had found her phone and that it still worked – two weeks after she lost it
‘Mind you, I was in a tube and trying to fight against a STRONG current so there was really no recovering my phone.’
Alyssa said that while she doesn’t usually ‘let materialistic things bring me down’, she was devastated when she realized the pictures on her phone weren’t backed up.
So she was even more ‘stunned, astounded, and absolutely blown away’ when Dallas called her weeks later to reveal the good news.
‘I can’t explain how happy I am,’ she wrote. ‘What a miracle guys.’
‘Thank you so much Dallas! Keep doing what you’re doing!’