Apple’s newly launched AirTag has become an instant hit. Uses have recounted stories on how AirTag helped them find their stuff. William Liu tells the story of how AirTag helped him track his wallet on the New York City subway system a day after it went missing.

Liu lost his wallet while returning from a concert in the early hours. It is highly unlikely to find a wallet or valuable lost while using the public transit system. However, Liu was in luck as he had an AirTag in his lost wallet.

Got up the next day around 1 pm, so quite some time had passed since the wallet slipped out. I wasn’t actually aware until I was about to leave the apartment with my girlfriend (her name is Ashley) to go to a friend’s BBQ. I pulled up the Find My app and saw that it was all the way at Church ave. Suspicions confirmed, Church ave is the last stop on the G. I was worried that the wallet was still on a moving subway and I’d have to track it down en route, but I saw it was at Church ave 15 min ago, and 10 minutes later there was another update that showed it was still there.”

Liu started searching for the wallet only around 1 PM, nearly 8 hours after losing the wallet. Liu, along with his girlfriend, approached someone at the MTA booth. They were dejected as the person had not heard about a lost wallet. Find My App has a precision finding feature; however, it was not working for Liu. Then the person at the booth suggested the wallet could be at an office located one level beneath.

We head down the stairs, and precision find activates! It starts pointing us right to the booth. I’m getting really excited at this point; I really needed my wallet because we were traveling at the end of the week. We knock on the door and ask the lady inside about a wallet. She says she hasn’t seen or heard about no wallet and shrugs. She really didn’t want to deal with us, and she seemed pretty sure that a wallet did not get turned in.

Liu realized that the wallet was close by and kept persuading the person. Finally, the lady took Liu’s iPhone inside as the arrow pointed towards the exact location. The lady was surprised to find the wallet and seemed impressed by AirTag.