A woman who issued a desperate plea to have her stolen iPhone returned to her because it contained the only images of her dead husband she had to show her son has had her plea answered by a good Samaritan.
Grieving widow Belen Ross, 27, had left her mobile phone unattended for a moment at the Avellaneda winery in the city of Mendoza in Argentina’s wine-producing Cuyo region and returned to see that it had gone.
The winery belonged to her husband Cristian, 43, after he opened it shortly after onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately a year and a half ago. He died one month ago of stomach cancer.
In the wake of the theft, the young widow took to social media to plead for her phone to be returned to her.
She wrote: “Yesterday my phone was stolen from the Avellaneda premises, a pink iPhone 7 Plus. Please, if anyone saw anything or if you know who took it, I need you to let me know.
“On that phone I have all the photos and memories of my husband, who died a month ago, and they’re the only memories I had to show my three-year-old boy of his dad.”
She added: “On the phone is everything I had of him: audio, videos and photos. They’re the only things I can show my darling boy when he grows up.”
Her son has been named as Lorenzo, 3.
Her post quickly made the rounds on social media, and an unnamed woman, who had reportedly bought the phone from “some kids”, returned it to the grieving widow after the two agreed to meet at a supermarket.
Ross said: “A girl wrote to me telling me she had my phone. She told me she’d bought it from some kids, but she then saw the Facebook post and wanted to hand it back to me. She contacted me and we met. I’ve just got it back.”
The good Samaritan’s identity has not been revealed, but she is said to be a woman from the nearby department of Guaymallen, also located in the province of Mendoza.
Ross said: “I was a little afraid it was a trap. That’s why I asked an officer to watch me. But no: the girl was really worried. She told me she didn’t have a phone and so she bought one from some kids. Surely they were the ones who robbed me.”
She added that she had given the good Samaritan an ARS-10,000 (GBP-70) reward. It is unclear if she also reimbursed her the amount she had paid the alleged thieves for the phone.
