Why stay any longer in Haarlem, Netherlands, we asked? Everything we want to see is closed on Mondays. On our walk to the railway station, I reach in my purse for my cell phone. Where’s my phone?

We run back to the store where I have just purchased a scarf. “No phone here,” the clerk says.” We return to a pair of picnic tables in one of the town squares. I can picture setting my phone on top of one. “Sorry, but if you left it there, it’s gone,” says a waiter at a nearby restaurant.

We return to Amsterdam where I write on Facebook: “Sad day. Lost my iPhone and my travel photos.”

About the same time, my Mexican friend, Claudia, who had talked me into getting What’sApp for my phone, receives a note from me via this app: “Hi.”

Since she and I often communicate in Spanish, she sends me an audio message in that language and asks when did I returned home. She gets another response: “Hi.”

“Only ‘Hi’?” she asks.

“I found this foon. I am living in Hoofddorp, Netherlands.”

Realizing I’m not the one sending her messages, she tells the sender to contact me on Facebook and posts details there of what she’s just learned. I start receiving Facebook messages in my iPad from myself.

The man calls our hotel and leaves a message to meet him at the airport.  We take the train there, but no passengers are at the gate where he said he’d be. When we arrive back at the hotel, we read a new Facebook post — that the real time to meet us is an hour later than he’s communicated.

We leave Amsterdam the next morning.  I check Facebook for messages. Nothing. When we arrive in Seattle, I find one message asking for our flight number and saying the man will meet us at the Schiphol airport — 14 hours too late.

The man emails that he’s shipping my phone. He sends a photo of the envelope. I groan. It’s bound to arrive with a sticker that says “damaged in transit” and I will be staring at shards.

Less than a week later, against all odds, the phone arrives. In one piece. In an ordinary envelope, tightly wrapped in half a paper towel. All thanks to the kindness and perseverance of one stranger, one friend (conscientious postal workers, too), and the wonders of social media.

Ann Oxrieder has lived in Bellevue for 35 years. She retired after 25 years as an administrator in the Bellevue School District and now blogs about retirement at http://stillalife.wordpress.com/.