It was a hot evening in April on “the Strip,” the famous Las Vegas Boulevard, and my mom and I had just finished eating a delicious Mexican dinner at Cabo Wabo Cantina. Feeling the need to walk off all of the chips and salsa we had just consumed, my mom and I decided to take a stroll down the street to observe the well-known botanical gardens at the close by Bellagio Resort and Casino. As we walked through the garden and gallery located in the lobby, I pointed out many different groups of flowers in the shapes of fish and turtles, and my mom was intrigued by some tulips arranged perfectly in the shape of a butterfly. Naturally, my mom wanted to photograph the “butterfly,” but when she reached into the side pocket of her big gray purse, she did not find her cell phone in its normal resting place. My mom dug around inside her purse for quite some time until she finally flipped the entire bag over to allow the contents, none of which being her phone, to clink onto the glass table in the lobby of the Bellagio. She desperately reached for the pockets of her white jeans and sighed, knowing the hope of finding her phone at her fingertips was a long shot. The beautiful arrangement of flowers all around us did not seem as impressive to either of us anymore; all of our focus was turned to finding her missing cell phone.

As we contemplated on what move we were going to make next, an idea suddenly came to me. I had an app on my own cell phone called Find My iPhone, and the app could track the location of any iPhone if one only typed in one’s Apple ID and password. I handed my mom my phone so she could type in her information, however, this idea proved to be fruitless when my mother could not remember her Apple password for the life of her and the app cut her off from trying to login after five failed attempts. She sadly handed me back my phone as we walked out of the lobby back towards the street. My mom whined about her carelessness and I wondered how on earth we were going to get anywhere in life without her phone. Our travel reservations, confirmation numbers, and plane tickets were all stored on the phone and would now be forgotten. A calendar filled with upcoming events in the next few days, weeks, and months was now lost. Countless pictures and videos that dated back to around 2009 were gone forever. Everything that meant anything was on my mom’s phone and not able to be duplicated; what were we going to do?

My mom and I arrived back at the crosswalk feeling quite dejected. Women in short skirts and high-heeled shoes swayed all around us while men in dress slacks and perfectly-gelled hair followed close by. Mostly everyone was laughing or rushing around us, clearly having a good time while my mom and I were starting to panic. The flashing lights, loud music, and speeding cars around us began to become way too much commotion for us to handle at the time. My mom and I were on the brink of having nervous breakdowns when we heard my own phone ring: someone at the restaurant we had just eaten at had found and turned in my mom’s lost phone! Whew! What a relief it was to know that none of our information, pictures, or calendar events would be compromised or lost! I could not believe that someone in the Sin City itself was benevolent enough to turn in the lost phone, and I think my mom was also in shock when the phone physically passed from Cabo Wabo Cantina’s host’s hand into the palm of her own again. Although many tourists typically say, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” that was not the case this time, and for that I am eternally grateful.