Almost everyone knows that sinking feeling when their beloved smartphone slips from their grasp and falls victim to the laws of gravity. The seconds between falling, hitting the ground and picking the phone up again to assess the damage can seem like an eternity.
For one Abbotsford woman, that ordeal took over three hours after she dropped her phone 2,500 feet from the small Cessna 1-40 feet she was riding in on Monday night.
One minute Jeannine Buck was taking pictures of Stanley Park out the window of the plane.
A moment later, the phone was tumbling towards the forest floor, hitting tree branches on its way down.
"My first thought was: 'What? Did that really just happen?"
Buck got to the park a few hours later and was able to track the phone to a general area, using the 'Find My iPhone' app on a friend's phone.
They called her phone and were able to track it down by following the sound of her ringtone – Otis Redding whistling his hit song 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.'
"I had just changed the ringtone [that] morning from Stayin' Alive. I've since changed in back in honour of the phone's will to live," she said.
The phone had only minor damage and still works fine.
"It was an absolute miracle."
Buck said her friend had warned her not to get her phone too close to the window.
"I had no idea the wind would grab it from my hand. Lesson learned for sure," she said. "I won't be taking pictures on a plane beside an open window ever again, that's for certain!"
This was one of the last photos Jeannine Buck took with her iPhone before dropping it out the window of the Cessna plane she was riding, to the forest of Stanley Park below.
The phone in question, after it was found Monday night.