£1 note a vital clue as William gets phone back
A GUERNSEY £1 note was partly responsible for a 12-year-old boy being reunited with his precious iPhone after he lost it in the UK.
Car enthusiast William Bridges was with his dad, James, at the Goodwood Members' Meeting in March.
The events at the race track near Chichester are attended by thousands of car lovers, who get the chance to see a huge array of different vehicles up close and in races.
William had been given an iPhone 5s for his 12th birthday in October and was using it to capture video and photos of the event, including shots of friends he had made.
He and his friends were at the event's funfair when he reached into the pocket of his joggers to take a picture and realised his precious phone was not there.
'My dad was about two feet away and I yelled at him that I'd lost my phone,' said William.
He and his dad set about trying to track it down. 'In the fairground I looked everywhere I had been, particularly on all of the rides, and back to the dining hall as well and looked where we'd been sitting.'
After having no luck, they asked after the lost phone at the event's information desk, but nobody had handed it in.
William ended up having to return home, fairly certain that he would never see the phone again.
It was a few days later that his mum, Kate, took a phone call from a man in the UK who asked if they had lost a phone and when she said that her son had, and confirmed its make, he revealed that he had found it at Goodwood.
'I was absolutely stunned,' said Mrs Bridges. 'I couldn't believe it. Taking that phone call was just bizarre.'
William said he was doing his homework when his mum took the call. 'I heard the word "iPhone" and my mum scream, and I put two and two together,' he said. 'I couldn't believe he'd found my phone.'
The finder had spotted the phone lying in the grass at the event, and, after returning home, he set about trying to trace the owner.
A sticker bearing the family's surname on the back of the phone was one thing that helped him track the Bridges down, but what helped him narrow the search significantly was a Guernsey £1 note which William always keeps in the phone case pocket – an emergency pound in case he needs to take a bus and doesn't have his Puffin pass.
