BOCA RATON, Fla. — A Boca Raton man made an incredible discovery in the Atlantic Ocean near Pompano Beach earlier this month.
He found an iPhone that went missing more than a year ago!
Marshal Sklar said he was scuba diving in about 40 feet of water in early September, shortly after Hurricane Dorian moved up the Florida coast, when he found the phone. It was covered in sand and barnacles and did not work.
"I took the case off of it and behind the case was a fishing license, and the fishing license was in pristine condition," Sklar said.
He then used the power of social media to find the owner of the phone.
A few days later, Carmen Miranda got a message on Facebook asking if the phone was his.
Miranda said he was delivering his boat from Pompano Beach to a new owner in Haulover Inlet in June 2018. Along the way, he lost his phone in the Atlantic Ocean around Hollywood.
"I had just bought the phone two weeks prior," said Miranda, who figured his phone was lost for good.
Sklar said he thinks Hurricane Dorian helped carry the phone approximately 20 miles from Hollywood to Pompano Beach.
"It was dropped in the water 25 miles south of where I found it," said Sklar. "So it had a year and a half to bury itself in the sand or the reef, and somehow it ended up right in front of me."
As a token of thanks for finding and returning the phone, Miranda surprised Sklar at his office earlier this week with his favorite case of beer.
Miranda said he plans to keep the phone for a good story to tell.
