It wasn’t until the end of Ryan Abreo’s Saturday hanging out with friends on the Toronto Islands that he realized his iPhone 4S was missing.

Abreo, 31, a vice-president at a marketing company, had accidentally taken his phone swimming. After a futile search, he considered the phone lost forever.

But 10 days later, on Sept. 4, an email landed in his inbox.

“I am Julian, and I found your iPhone on the 28th of August, in the lake on the other side of Centre Island. I am nine. … The phone is NOT DAMAGED. I’m amazed that it’s not damaged.”

Abreo was in disbelief; he thought a friend was pranking him. He forwarded the email to a friend, who posted it on Reddit.

But it wasn’t a joke. Three days after Abreo lost the phone, Julian Kelly was wading through shallow water and picking up stones at Ward’s Island Beach when he found it. It was dripping wet and starting to rust.

“He was excited about the chance of having an iPhone … but I said to him that it was probably a $600 paperweight,” said his dad, John Kelly, who was with him that day, along with Julian’s younger sister.

Julian, a Grade 4 student at Clinton Street Junior Public School, didn’t give up. Under his parents’ guidance, he put the iPhone in a container of rice — a known strategy for resurrecting waterlogged phones — and left it there for a week.

When he plugged it into his mom Tricia’s computer, the phone started charging. Immense excitement followed.

“I thought that if we couldn’t find the owner, then I thought that I could sell it to my friends for $600,” Julian said.

But the family easily figured out it was Abreo’s phone an tracked him down.

When Abreo went to pick it up, Julian gave him a hug first, then the phone. “I was really sort of touched by this kid,” Abreo said. “He's a gentleman at a very young age and I really respect it.”

Julian’s email has accrued more than 15,000 views on Reddit. In gratitude, Abreo gave him a $50 prepaid credit card, money Julian said he will save or spend on Lego.

“If I do save it, it’s probably going to be for a castle when I grow up,” he added.

Although Abreo bought a new phone after his old one drowned, he said he will return it and keep this one.

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“It had a three-day swimming lesson, and I feel like I should hold on to it.”

With files from Stephanie Law