It was Celeste Glazer’s athletic daughter Bridget who saved her from a potential watery grave in Capitola this week, but it was 21st-century technology that saved the San Jose biotechnology executive’s phone.
Glazer and seven family members had evacuated Thursday morning from Capitola as massive waves began to surge over a low seawall in front of their rented oceanside apartment. She and Bridget went back a couple hours later to retrieve a suitcase and return a parking permit, just as an abnormally high tide was pushing 20-foot swells into the town.
In front of their unit, with seawater flowing rapidly over the pavement, Glazer fell in, and was pulled for nearly 15 feet until her daughter, a 15-year-old gymnast and freshman at Prospect High School in San Jose, grabbed her as she was about to be swept over the seawall into the raging ocean.
Glazer’s life was safe, but while she had been fighting to stay ashore, she had let go of her new iPhone 14, issued by the San Jose biotechnology company where she is vice-president of global marketing.
Thankful for her rescue, and at the family’s new vacation accommodations just up the road that night, Glazer was resigned to having lost her phone, and stressed out about how her boss at Molecular Devices would react, she said. Then, as she watched a movie on her iPad, a notification popped up that her phone was nearby and still powered up,
“I was like, ‘What? That’s really weird,’” said Glazer, 51. But now she had hope: If she could find the phone, her boss would not have reason to be mad, and she would not have to go through the hassle of replacing the device.
“I was talking to my family and saying, “I really want to go find it.” They said, ‘No. It’s dark.’ Everybody was telling me to just forget about the phone. My mother was like, ‘You’re crazy,’” she said. “Bridget said she’d go with me, and my husband was like, ‘I’m not letting you go by yourself, you might fall in.’”
Bridget believed they were going on a wild goose chase, but off they went after 9 p.m., using a “find” function on Glazer’s Apple watch to try to locate the phone.
Using a flashlight and lights on Marc and Bridget’s phones, they eyed the dark expanse of sand left by the receding tide and waves. Since Glazer’s watch lacked the wireless connection it needed to seek out her phone, her daughter’s phone provide a hotspot connection to the watch.
She pinged the phone. The phone pinged back.
It seemed like quite a distance away, possibly by the restaurants along Capitola’s seaside esplanade. Her missing shoe had been found in front of Zelda’s restaurant in the afternoon by a Bay Area News Group reporter. Perhaps her phone was there, too. When they got there, Glazer found her lip balm, and felt hope. But she received no ping from her phone.
The three returned to the Venetian Apartments, and they again received pings, stronger than before. Glazer’s watch showed the phone’s location on a map as a dot in a highlighted circle. “We were like, ‘Let’s just find the loudest place it is and start digging,’” Bridget said. They dug.
About 10 feet away from where Glazer remembered letting go of her phone, and a foot deep in the sand, a bit of purple plastic came into view. It was the case holding Glazer’s iPhone, and the device was still working.
“I just started screaming,” Glazer said. “I was like, ‘Yes!’”
Added Bridget: “We felt like treasure hunters.”
