How an iPhone saved this mother and son and their Taylor Swift concert plans

By Rob Hayes

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    LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Los Angeles County Search and Rescue members tracked down a mother and her son who became lost Sunday while hiking in the Angeles National Forest, thanks to a new feature on the Apple iPhone 14.

Irina Fedorovskaya and her son Egor Shesterikov are visiting Los Angeles from the United Kingdom, with plans to see Taylor Swift in concert on Thursday.

“It’s the only reason that we came here,” said Egor.

The two went hiking Sunday afternoon to see a waterfall, but got their trails mixed up and ended up lost as the sun set.

With no water or food, Shesterikov decided to call 911, but with no cell service in the forest, the call failed. However, because he had an iPhone 14, it was able to send what Apple calls an Emergency SOS, which sends a text to first responders using satellites.

“Not many people know about it,” said Mike Leum with the L.A. County Search and Rescue team. “I didn’t know about it until we started getting these rescues.”

Leum said the technology allowed rescuers to see exactly where the mother and son were located, allowing for an expedited rescue that took about two hours.

Without the satellite 911 data, a rescue would have taken considerably longer.

“It would have been a day or two before we got to cover the area where they actually were found,” Leum told Eyewitness News.

The mother and son are doing fine and will be attending Swift’s concert on Thursday.

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