Calgary woman uses Find My iPhone to track man suspected of stealing device from restaurant server station

When a server at Filos Restaurant and Lounge in Deer Run had her iPhone 14 taken off her server station on June 13 just before 9 p.m., she embarked on a journey and a half to get it back.

“I was on a rampage to find it,” Ashley Hart told CityNews.

“That’s not a lot of money to everyone else, but that’s a lot of money to me personally.”

She says she was working at the local pub, “as I have been for seven years,” noting she knows almost everyone that walks through the doors.

“It’s just a local neighbourhood pub. So that makes it awesome,” Hart said.

She says there was a man who looked suspicious to her with a foot injury who walked with two canes.

He was captured on surveillance taking the phone, with Calgary police confirming the CCTV footage with CityNews.

Ashley Hart successfully recovered her iPhone 14 Pro after it was taken from a server station at the restaurant she worked at. CCTV footage captured the man who allegedly stole the device. Hart used Find My iPhone to locate her device, which ultimately led to the arrest of one man. (Courtesy Ashley Hart)

When she got home after the ordeal at around midnight, the Find My iPhone feature on her smartwatch started “pinging.”

“It started like violently making a noise like every two seconds that my phone was pinging out an address that was three blocks away from work, and that made me instantly go into panic mode,” she said.

“I couldn’t just go like wake up neighbours … a phone is important to me because it’ll cost me $1,800 to replace, but it wasn’t to everybody else.”

So, over the course of four days, using her laptop and watch, she followed the notification across Calgary and tracked it to several homes.

However, after she called 911 numerous times, police were dispatched to a couple of locations and knocked on the doors of these homes. Either nobody answered, or nobody fessed up.

“As police cannot lawfully enter a residence without a search warrant, police left the residence,” CPS said.

Eventually, though, on June 17, her phone was on the move, and this time making stops in public places.

She first followed it to a pawn shop that refused to buy it and continued to track it to a restaurant, which the suspect left minutes before she arrived.

“‘Hey, did you see a guy with two canes just walk out here and they’re like, ‘Yeah, you just missed him by one minute,'” she explained.

They gave her a precise description of his vehicle, which she finally caught up to at a 7-11 store at 7:15 p.m.

When she spotted him, she blocked his car and asked for her phone back.

“He handed it to me immediately as if that was going to make me go away,” Hart recalled.

“And then he laughed like out like I was ridiculous for being upset.”

Even as she had the vehicle blocked, the man got out and began to walk away.

“So I chased him down the road, which 911 told me not to do, but I’d searched for him for four days and [used] literally an entire tank of gas to drive around the northeast,” Hart said, adding that she personally went to 10 addresses in search of her device.

But she got the last laugh as she called police, who arrived 10 minutes after and made an arrest.

“That was a great end to a frustrating week,” she said.

Gurdeep Singh Cheema, 49, has been charged with one count of theft under $5,000.

He is expected to appear in court on Aug 24.

“CPS does not recommend that anyone approach a suspect alone as situations can escalate quickly and become dangerous,” police said in an emailed statement.

“The complainant did the right thing by reporting the incident to police and sharing new information with them.”