Lost but maybe found

Last night I had dinner at Bruninas, a place I have eaten a number of times. I was eating with Christine after playing some pickleball. I was still wearing my sweaty clothes. When it came time to pay I realized I didn’t have my wallet on me. I figured I left it in the truck by mistake. I wanted to run out and get it but Christine insisted on paying. So when we went out to the truck I did a quick glance around and didn’t see it but I figured I just had it stuffed in my pickleball bag somewhere.

So when we stopped somewhere else I looked again for my wallet and could not find it. Now I was a bit worried. I opened up the FindMY app on my phone since I have an Apple AirTag in my wallet. It identified the last time it saw my wallet was somewhere in the parking lot of the restaurant, fck…. The gym shorts I have on are shallow so I can only assume I stuffed my wallet in them only to have it fall out without my noticing, great. I went back to the restaurant parking lot hoping to see my wallet lying there somewhere. It wasn’t.

I walked around using the app to try to aid in tracking the wallet but it kept saying the air tag was not nearby. The doom scenario of someone picking up the wallet and making off with it was now a very possible reality. I went back home and kept checking the app to see if a new ping came in. For those of you that don’t know, the way an air tag works is any time it is close to any Apple device it phones home to report it’s location. If I saw a new location pop up I would know someone has it. The location never updated.

So somewhere around 9:30 I decided to go back to that parking lot and look some more. I turned on the tracker function on the phone which is sort of like a metal detector. If you get in range of the tag it will tell you and as you get closer it will show you exactly the direction and distance it is. As I walked the lot I had no luck however I decided I should completely trace where I walked so I moved up towards the restaurant.

As I did I suddenly got a hit, I was far away but it detected the tag in the vicinity. As I kept moving towards the entrance I then started getting distance info. Eventually I had a strong signal that pointed just inside the door to the hostess station, only 3 feet away. Unfortunately by this time the restaurant was closed and nobody was there but I called the number on the door and left a message letting them know they had my wallet. I plan to get there just as the doors open today to reclaim it. If all ends well technology will have saved my ass, again.