A mother-of-three whose car was stolen by professional thieves while she attended a wedding was able to steal it right back after launching a Mission: Impossible-style hi-tech heist.
Vivi Kala, 38, parked her Kia Sportage SUV in a residential street beside the Prince Regent Hotel in Chigwell, Essex on the evening of August 20.
As her husband called the police, marketing expert Ms Kala had a brainwave - and fired up the Find My app on her iPhone.
The app uses the billion-strong anonymised network of Apple products worldwide - from phones to tablets and laptops - to help owners find their lost devices.
And that meant that, despite not being connected to WiFi or a mobile network, Ms Kala could see exactly where her Macbook was as it sat in the back of the stolen car: on the other side of Chigwell, parked up.
She called upon an Uber driver who, she told the Mail, very much understood his mission and helped reunite the couple with the car within a matter of minutes.
The attempted theft could not have come at a worse time - just one day before she and her family had been set to drive to Scotland for a holiday.
Vivi Kala and her husband David at the wedding in Chigwell - completely unaware that their car had been stolen outside
Ms Kala's MacBook Pro was turned into a car tracker using Apple's Find My app, which anonymously pings other Apple devices to display an approximate location for lost items
It was a pure stroke of luck that the laptop had been in the boot, Ms Kala said. Had it not been, it is unlikely that she would have gotten her car back at all.
'We almost didn't have the laptop in the car - we were meant to take everything from the car before the wedding but we didn't have time,' she recalled.
'We'd parked on a street right outside the venue because the car park was full. We never thought it would get stolen. It's not a Range Rover - it's the most "family car" car ever.'
'My husband was the first to realise. He asked me, "Where's the car?"... I just said it had to be there. The whole street, all of the cars were still there except ours.'
Hoping for the best, they checked TRACE, the London-wide database of towed cars to check if the car had been lifted - before reluctantly accepting it had been pinched.
And as her husband called the police, Ms Kala had the idea of looking up her laptop, and the Macbook - despite being on standby - came to the rescue.
'I just kept refreshing it and it said it was still there,' she added. 'I called an Uber straight away and we set off, my husband still on the phone to the police as I was briefing the driver.
'He was asking how we knew the car was there and I showed him the app. He was like, "yes, let's go!" and off he went. He was sold on the mission!'
The fake number plates even have the name of a Kia dealership on them - suggesting they have either been professionally cloned or stolen from another car
The Kia was undamaged - and could be driven to Scotland for a family holiday as planned (pictured)
She added: 'He wasn't speeding... but he got us there very quickly. He was so there with us, bless him. He didn't leave until we drove off.'
Ms Kala's husband tentatively got out of the Uber as she hung back - in case the thieves had been hanging around. And at first, they weren't sure they had even found their car - as the thieves had already swapped the number plates.
It now bore the identity of another, real Kia Sportage in what Ms Kala suspects would have been a bid to avoid being detected by automatic number plate recognition systems. The plates themselves may have been stolen.
In a sign of the thieves' professionalism, the fake plates even bore the name and postcode of a legitimate Kia dealership.
'There was a point at which I almost wasn't sure what was happening,' she said. 'I just thought, are we stealing back our own car?'
Vivi isn't sure how the car was stolen, as she swears blind it had been locked.
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It took 10 attempts to unlock the car with the remote before it responded, suggesting its central locking may have been jammed by the thieves.
But there have been no problems since - and the family managed to enjoy their break in Scotland.
She is now shopping for a steering lock and an Airtag - a far cheaper way of tracking the car compared with a Macbook Pro, which retails from £1,999 - and advocates for other people to consider doing the same.
'If we hadn't had the laptop in there we wouldn't have been able to find the car,' she said.
'Even though the car was just six minutes away, from where we were at the hotel that could have been anywhere if we hadn't known where to look.
'This all happened by the grace of God. If I can help one other person that's more than enough for me.'
THow does Apple's Find My network work?
Apple's Find My network allows owners of iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, Airpods, Apple Watches and other devices to find them even if they lack GPS, WiFi or even a mobile signal.
A lost device uses a low-powered form of Bluetooth - a wireless technology - to 'ping' other Apple devices in the area that are capable of transmitting its approximate location via GPS, WiFi or mobile signal.
The signals are encrypted and anonymous - the person whose device picked up on a location cannot see it, and does not know that their device has helped to locate the lost item.
Initially, the technology was used only to find lost iPhones. Apple has since expanded it to include its full line of up-to-date products, and introduced the Airtag - a small tracking device designed for items such as keys - in 2021.
Participating in the Find My network is optional - but without it, you cannot locate a device if it is lost.