The Lookout Blog

Lookout Super User: Russell

Occupation: Police Officer

Location:  California

Lookout User Since:  2010

Device Type: Android LG ALLY

Favorite Lookout Feature: Find My Phone

What do you use your phone for? My phone holds valuable information: contacts, photos, emails, confidential work information. I use my phone for just about everything.

How Russell found Lookout: A co-worker suggested Russell download Lookout, saying, “you never know when it may come handy!”

Moral of the Story: “Lookout helped me out in a big way—without it, I may never have found my phone!”

How Lookout Saved The Day:

Russell is a law enforcement officer in Northern California. One afternoon, he was dispatched to a high crime neighborhood to conduct a search at a parolee’s house. At some point during the search, Russell took his phone from his pocket and unknowingly set it down. After he had finished searching the house, he and his partner left the residence.

An hour later, Russell went to call his wife and when he reached for his phone, he realized it was not in his uniform pocket! He couldn’t imagine where it could be and he asked his co-workers to try calling it, thinking that it could be in the patrol car somewhere.  Unfortunately, they heard no sound.

Russell remembered that he had Lookout on his phone and hurried back to the police station to log on to his computer. When he prompted Lookout to locate his missing device, he saw a map of this phone’s location.  The map indicated that his phone was in the city where he had conducted the search at the parolee’s residence. Russell grew uneasy as he remembered all the sensitive data that he stores on his phone: photos of his wife, kids, other law enforcement partners and confidential phone numbers. “I can’t have the private info on my phone getting into the wrong hands,” he told Lookout later. He knew that he had to get his phone back—fast!

Russell got in his car and rushed back to the parolee’s residence, hoping that the parolee was not yet home and that no one had found his phone.  When he knocked on the door, Russell was relieved to see the parolee’s grandmother and learned that the Parolee had not yet returned to the house. Russell quickly searched the same room he was in earlier that day. Sure enough, he found his phone sitting on the bed where he had mistakenly left it. Russell was so happy to have gotten his phone back before it fell into the wrong hands. He told us, “Lookout helped me in a big way!”