Hiker rescued in Southern California using Apple iPhone SOS feature

A hiker hoping to see Switzer Falls had to be rescued after taking a wrong turn in the Angeles National Forest Sunday night.

The man activated the emergency transponder feature on his iPhone 14, which contacted authorities.

A volunteer rescue crew was notified about the hiker, who was lost near the Arroyo Seco Research Foundation next to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, just before 8 p.m.

It took volunteer Mike Leum and a trainee about an hour and a half to locate the hiker, who they had been communicating with using satellite text messages, telling the man to stay where he was.

Once found, the rescue crew and hiker had another two-hour hike, at some points in water up to their knees, to get the man out of the forest to safety.

It’s not the first time rescuers have been contacted by lost or injured people using the safety feature.

“We were going down this small hill. There was a lot of dirt and as we were going down all I remember is that the dirt just sort of gave way,” said Juana Reyes, who was visiting a friend in L.A. in June 2023 when she suffered a debilitating ankle injury in Trail Canyon Falls.

After realizing they did not have cellphone coverage, Reyes realized that the SOS feature on her Apple smartphone had automatically triggered, notifying first responders.

KTLA’s Rich Demuro, host of Tech Smart, says that Apple’s emergency SOS satellite feature, which was launched with iPhone 14, allows users to connect to emergency services through text messaging and when there is no cellular or wireless signal. The technology kicks in automatically when a person tries to text or call 911.

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“If you have, let’s say, an accident or a significant fall, it does have automatic crash or fall technology where it senses that and can send out an automatic alert,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Department Sgt. John Gilbert told KTLA.

Sgt. Gilbert coordinated the search and rescue team that first contacted Reyes, who was later airlifted to safety.

In December, the satellite SOS technology helped locate two crash victims in the Angeles National Forest after their car plummeted 300 feet off a cliff.

“Under older technology, nobody would’ve known they were down there,” Gilbert said of that incident. “They wouldn’t have had a way to call out.”

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