On Monday evening Melissa Vasquez lost control of her Chevrolet Cruze while driving down a road in Cambell, CA just south of San Jose. Her car plunged 500 yards down a brush-filled ravine flipping over multiple times. Twelve hours later her family reported that she was missing.
Her Chevy Cruze was equipped with an OnStar navigation system and like they show in the commercials, OnStar automatically reported to the police that the car had been involved in an accident.
Unfortunately, Melissa’s OnStar GPS system wasn’t exactly sure where she was and twice gave the police the wrong coordinates.
So the authorities knew she had been in an accident somewhere, they just didn’t know exactly where she was.
And then Campbell police officer David Cameron had an idea that he might be able to use Melissa’s iPhone to locate the missing woman. Cameron went to the family’s home and managed to crack into Melissa’s iPad.
“I made an educated guess based on a series of common numbers that people use for passwords and on the third attempt, I was able to get in,” Cameron said.
Cameron used the Find My iPhone app to pinpoint Melissa’s location and 19 hours after the accident the police managed to locate her overturned car and effect a helicopter rescue.
While Melissa Vasquez is currently in the hospital she is expected to recover from her injuries and the ordeal.
I suppose this is a good example of how Apple’s new security isn’t going to prevent the police from doing their jobs – then again, if Ms. Vasquez had picked a stronger password she might still be missing.
Of course, the other question here is what the heck was going on with OnStar? If nothing else she should get a refund.
