Jay Schroeder’s sons both play at Baseball USA.
They’ve been going for nearly four years, and he says they love it.
“We would send the kids off to concession stands and say, ‘Hey, go get a snack,’ and it was always kind of a feeling of freedom when we’re inside the gates.”
But now, things have changed.
“When we got home, that’s when my iPhone gave me an alert that said unknown device detected in your area,” explained Schroeder.
He says he located the device with his cell phone and the AirTag pinged three times. He could hear it in the distance and realized it was coming from the bathroom.
His son had just taken a shower and his clothes were in his arms. The sound was coming from his pants.
“He walked over to me and was like, ‘Dad, what’s this?’ I knew what it was, so my heart sank immediately,” the father said. “The thing that popped up was a map with red dots for the track history. It tracked us from Baseball USA to our home. Once he convinced me, ‘Hey dad, I didn’t pick this up, I didn’t find this,’ then it was just fear.”
When the device popped up on his phone it had the last four digits of the registered owner’s cell phone number.
He quickly messaged his baseball team and no one had that number. He then called the police to ask what his course of action should be.
“It’s very terrifying at the end of the day because no one ever really knows, especially if you don’t have an iPhone,” explained Natalia Avila from the Central Spy Shop.
She says recently GPS trackers have been flying off of the shelves and a lot of parents come in to track their teens who may be new to driving.
But Avila says the most common customer is a spouse tracking their wife or husband.
“I also have a lot of people come in to show us these items that they’ve found to see if there’s anything hidden inside of them such as a camera or a GPS tracker,” explained Avila. “Apple has it to where they bounce off of other Apple phones in order to see the exact location of the Apple Air Tag. So, if you don’t have an Apple device, you won’t be able to see that this thing has been following you.”
Avila says there are devices you can buy that will pinpoint where and if a GPS device is near you.
She explained that Apple Air Tag batteries can last a year but the other devices you can purchase have to be recharged because they can be accessed by anyone.
So for Schroeder, he says although this whole thing was unsettling, he knows it won’t disrupt their lives anymore.
“We were both really worried the night it happened, lost a little sleep thinking about it the possibility of what it could have been.”
But he does hope this comes as a warning to other parents.
“There’s too much unknown right now, and I would say keep a shorter leash and sharper eye on your kids for sure.”
Houston Police Department has the report and is waiting for the case to be assigned and then investigated.
They also made it clear that this is not a common occurrence and if it does happen, police reports are not filed.