Diver Discovers Lost Phone Under Waterfall, Returns It to Owner Who Lost It Nearly 1 Year Before
When we consider wide stretches of water, I imagine that most of us think about the wine-dark ocean or the tranquil, sea-green flats by small Caribbean islands. Such spaces tease the imagination.
Not so muddy rivers whose cloudy currents don’t look particularly pretty in images. But as one YouTube sensation has shown, even less glamorous water can hold treasures.
According to KPNX, a man named Dallas decided to take his love of scuba diving and rivers to another level.
How? He started the YouTube channel Man + River, which mashes up a number of unique concepts.
Treasure hunting. Underwater exploration. The thrill of unboxing items. All of them come together in Dallas’ adventures.
See, Dallas dives in rivers throughout Arizona, searching for items that people may have dropped.
He uses metal detectors and other kinds of gear to suss out lost items, which he then shows in his videos.
Bracketing the footage with chilled-out tropical-house music, he displays all sorts of oddities. A working bugle, a firearm, a knife, a drone and a GoPro have all turned up.
So have smartphones — lots and lots of smartphones. The Sun reported that one of Dallas’ earlier finds involved an iPhone X that had spent two weeks at the bottom of a riverbed.
The YouTuber disassembled the phone, dried it out, and then powered it on. Somehow it still worked, and he was able to return it to its owner.
Another time, Dallas documented in a video how he hiked with some diving chums up to a secluded waterfall.
He actually ended up directly beneath the waterfall, scouring the dirt for lost items.
And what items he found! Dallas discovered a bracelet, a pocket knife, and several rings.
Every time he discovered something worthwhile, he loosed his signature yelp of “woohoo!”
“When I get excited and I find something, I naturally just let out a really embarrassing ‘woohoo,’” he explained. He had plenty of reason to cheer on this particular outing.
Sure, he had to sort through a lot of junk, but when he moved up to a higher pool, he encountered a section of silt that make his metal detector frenetically flash.
“I spent several minutes digging this spot,” he stated. Eventually, he dug up an iPhone in a waterproof pouch.
“This thing was about eight inches deep in the sand,” Dallas said. “It has to have been down there for like a year.”
Amazingly, it held a charge, and Dallas was able to reach the grateful owner.
Initially, the owner wanted to pay the YouTuber, but when Dallas refused, he promised to treat him to lunch instead.
“It’s been nine months,” the owner said when he had it in his hands.
“This is what makes it all worth it,” Dallas joked in reference to the free food. “That and having people get their stuff back, of course.”
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