Stolen Apple Watch located after owner pings it during police search

Apple Watch Hermes (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

A stolen Apple Watch was located by pinging it.
The owner pinged the watch while police were searching.
Two men were arrested.

A stolen Apple Watch was located after its owner managed to ping it at just the right time, alerting police officers to its location.

The Fox40 report (via 9to5Mac) doesn't go into great detail, but it appears that the watch's owner happened to ping it while the police were in the process of looking for it. However, it's possible that police asked them to do so. When the watch was pinged, it made an audible sound that allowed police to identify the watch.

Two men are behind bars after police found them with a stolen Apple Watch that had been pinged by its owner, according to the Roseville Police Department.Officials said investigators tracked down the location of an Apple Watch stolen in Roseville Wednesday to a parking lot on Auburn Boulevard near Whyte Avenue.In the parking lot was a motorhome with 21-year-old Elijah Filson and 38-year-old Jacob Cummins inside, both of whom were on probation, investigators said.While police were searching the motorhome, the owner of the Apple Watch pinged it, causing it to emit a sound. Officers said they found the watch in a cabinet in the back of the motorhome.Both Filson and Cummins were arrested and booked into the South Placer County Jail on multiple charges, including possession of stolen property and possession of a controlled substance

Pinging an Apple Watch is part of the Find My app that is part of iOS 13, iPadOS 13, macOS 10.15 Catalina, and watchOS. It combines Find My Friends and FInd My iPhone into a single app and can be hugely useful when a device is lost or stolen. Just as was the case here.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.