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Cell phone returns to owner after 9-month journey halfway around the world

Posted at 11:56 AM, Jul 04, 2014
and last updated 2014-07-04 11:58:10-04

Chickasha, Oregon – A man has his phone back after it traveled halfway around the world.

Kevin Whitney says he lost his iPhone last October.

“I had it in my pocket and I bent over to work on a copper bottom door and it fell out of my pocket into my grain pit and went up the elevator,” said Whitney.

It disappeared into a bin full of 280,000 pounds of grain.

“I thought I’ll never see that phone again,” said Whitney.

Little did Kevin know, his iPhone would take a nine-month journey halfway around the world before making it back to the palm of his hand.

From Chickasha it was driven by truck to another grain facility in Inola, Oklahoma. Then it traveled along the Arkansas River. From there, it sailed down the Mississippi River by barge to Convent, Louisiana. Finally, the iPhone made its way to Kashima, Japan by ship.

It was mixed in with 2 million bushels of grain sorghum.

Then just days ago Kevin got a call.

“The man on the other end said, ‘is this Kevin Whitney?’ I said yeah this is Kevin. He said, ‘did you lose a cell phone?’ I said yeah I lost a cell phone last fall.”

A worker at a grain mill in Japan mailed the phone back to Louisiana and from there it was sent to Kevin in Chickasha.

“It’s crazy I can’t believe it. What really shocked me about it all was what a small world it is. There a lot of a lot of meaningful pictures on it so we are real glad to get the phone back,” said Whitney.