We found an iPad. In the middle of the street. Can you solve this mystery?

Sunday was my wife's birthday, so we loaded up the kids and biked from Glen Ellyn to Wheaton, a nearby suburb, for lunch.

(Atomic Turkey sandwiches at Shane's Deli, of course.)

And on the way home, my wife found an iPad.

An iPad 2. With no case, but with no screen cracks... literally in the middle of a busy street.

We took it home, charged it for a few hours, and it works. We don't have the unlock code, so this is as  far as we've gotten.

And that is where YOU come in, internet - let's find the owner.


It's not like this is a particularly valuable item. It's a six year old iPad.

I don't know why this fascinates me so much.

AND YET IT DOES.

It's an iPad 2, 16 GB, and it's running a version of iOS from the pre-7 skeumorphic era.

I haven't seen this lock screen in ages. Since before our 3-year old was born.

In tech terms, this is like finding an ancient artifact. It may as well have been an Apple IIc in the street.

It's the A1397 cellular version, but it doesn't connect to any cell networks. At least not on the lock screen.

The fact that it had no case, has some wear to the back shell, and HAS NEVER UPDATED iOS in SIX YEARS leads me to believe its owner didn't care much about it.

BUT, the perfect screen... after so many years without a case, makes me think that this WASN'T a hand-me-down to a kid.

How could it get into the middle of the street, though? If someone left it on the roof of their car, it would have fallen and cracked.

It looks for all the world like someone gently placed it there.

Which is why it's bugging me so much, I guess.

CLUE #1 - a custom engraving! It says "Digitech Systems, Inc." on the back.

So..... mystery solved, right?

HOWEVER.... there isn't a company by that name anywhere around Chicago.

The only Illinois corporation by that name was dissolved in 1998... more than a decade before this iPad was introduced.

There's a corporation with that name near Denver -- Maybe it's a company with at least one employee in Glen Ellyn?

(Or maybe the company just sold off old iPads on eBay, and one wound up making its way to Glen Ellyn, and eventually was given to a kid, who was using it to handle accounting for her lemonade stand, and she forgot it on the street when she was cleaning up.)

CLUE #2 - there IS NO CLUE #2.

We have nothing else to go by. I've posted on Facebook groups pertaining to our city.

I'll keep looking for this owner, probably longer than necessary.

Then, eventually, I'll probably factory restore the iPad, update it to the last iOS it can run, and.... give it to my daughter?

She'll probably just leave it in the street again, though.