If your iPhone is stolen, Apple has supplied you with a way to help get it back. It’s called Find My iPhone, part of the Mobile Me package from Apple. The feature needs to be activated before you lose your iPhone—it can’t be activated afterward. Find My iPhone is not a free service. It’s part of the Mobile Me package that costs $99 a year from Apple ($70 from Amazon), but you can sign up for a free 60-day trial at Apple.com if you want to test it out.

And to prove that Find My iPhone can work, here are four true life stories of thieves hunted down and iPhones recovered.

Busch Gardens Purse Snatcher

In February 2010, a mother and daughter had their bags and iPhone stolen at a roller coaster in Busch Gardens, Tampa Bay Florida.

For a few seconds, the Jensens feared the two $300 phones were gone. All of the sudden, 13-year-old Caroline started jumping up and down.

She had an app for this.

“We can track him! We can track him by GPS!” Caroline told police.

….A group of about 20 people —the Jensen family, officers and park employees — huddled around the computer.

Within seconds, a Tampa map appeared with a blinking orange dot moving away from the park. “We’re thinking to ourselves, there are our cell phones going down the road,” Jennifer Jensen said.

….Tampa police officers descended, armed with descriptions of the man on the surveillance tape and the Jensens’ ringtones.

“Make the call,” officers told the Jensens by radio. They dialed their cell numbers from the break room as police listened at the complex.

“We have a suspect in view,” police said via radio as they approached a man sitting outside apartment 201.

“The subject quickly put a cell phone into his left front pants pocket,” an arrest report states.

Police said Richard Emerson, 25, later admitted to the theft. Officers found the other phone inside his apartment.

Read the entire story at TampaBay.com.

The Smashed Car Window

Even in the wilderness of Mesa County, Colorado, thieves look to prey on adventurers and their iPhones:

so, my dad and I went on a 3 day father and son river trip and parked the car where we get out of the river to leave, so we get up to the cars and all 4 cars had one window broken and all the valuables taken from the car, so we ended up submitting our case to the near by cop and started on our 5 hour journey home, when we got back i remembered that i had set up the “track my iphone” on the mobileme site and immediately got on and tracked it.

it ended up being at a house near by where it was stolen, so i called up the cop that had taken our case and told him where it was located. as soon as i told him the address, he started to laugh, apparently the family had done a few things like this before and the local police had been trying to catch and arrest them but could never get proof that they had been the culprits.

now they had proof. so 4 police showed up at the door of this house and ended up getting mine and my dads iphones back along with my wallet and the Garmen GPS, they also were able to recover the two phones and wallet that was taken from the other car that was broken into. so thanks to mobileme we will all be getting our belongings back and a family of criminals will be put in jail.”

Read the entire article at Mashable.com.

Chase Through Chicago

An iPhone goes missing in a Chicago bar, but luckily the owner had just activated Find My iPhone. Armed with a laptop and a wireless 3G card, the hunt is on across the city streets of Chicago.

Then an amazingly lucky thing happened. I refreshed the iPhone location and the circle moved, to the corner of the block, and shrunk in size to maybe 100 feet across. I waited a minute and refreshed again. The small circle had shifted southward down Washtenaw.

“THAT WAY!”

Us three skinny white guys walked at a rapid pace in the direction of the circle. We moved past the birthday party, curious if one of the participants might be culpable, but the circle again shifted farther south. I was ready to break for our car if the phone started moving away faster than we could catch it, but it hovered at the very end of the street, at the corner of Washtenaw and Milwaukee.

Ryan and Mark raced ahead, literally making a flanking maneuver to the left and right, as I approached the intersection.

I clicked Refresh. The circle moved again. It was directly over the bus stop on the south side of Milwaukee Avenue.

I yelled and pointed.

….He sheepishly waved me over.

“Have you got it?” I asked as I marched up to the guy, acting far more intimidating than I felt. Our iPhone-pilfering friend apparently works at the sketchy bar, and as he fished around in his bag, he gave a questionable alibi about having found the phone, intending to return it, but being intimidated by “all these scary-looking messages” that kept popping up on the display. “Um, yeah, those were from me,” I replied curtly. He pulled my phone out, totally unharmed, and handed it over. I resisted the urge to giggle.

I shook his hand – Lord knows why I did that – and the three of us walked off. We laughed triumphantly, adrenaline racing, feeling like the Jack Bauer trio.

Read the entire firsthand account at The Intermittent Kevin.

The Mugging

A common street mugging in Pittsburgh gets an uncommon ending thanks to the power of the iPhone:

The victim, who was not identified by police, said two men approached him at about 1 a.m. near the intersection of Amberson Avenue and Amberson Place. He told police the men demanded his wallet and asked for his PIN number for his credit cards; one of the men also showed what appeared to be a handgun.

The man told police he turned over his wallet, his PIN number and his iPhone before running away toward Ellsworth Avenue. Officers arrived while he was contacting his bank to cancel his cards.

The man later used his computer to track the location of his iPhone to a Wal-Mart in North Versailles, where police said the suspects purchased items with his stolen credit card before moving on to an Eat’n Park restaurant on Route 30.

North Versailles police detained the suspects, who were in a gray 2004 Dodge van, at a gas station. Police said they recovered a black pellet gun, as well as stolen identification, credit cards and cash.

Read the entire article at PostGazzete.com.