When Apple announced the new iPhone 3GS and the 3.0 software at their annual WWDC keynote, the world was abuzz with excitement and anticipation. While the new device's video features may have stole the show, the practical bunch of us saw immediate value in the new Find My iPhone feature for OS 3.0.

In case you forgot, Find My iPhone is powered by MobileMe. If you lose your phone, it will not only help you track it down, but it will also let you display a custom message on the home screen and/or remotely wipe your personal content. Sounds pretty neat, right? 15 year-old Colorado resident Dustin Simantob certainly thinks so, as the service recently helped him recover his stolen property and catch some criminals in the process. We received the story via email, and thought it was so remarkable that we'd share Simantob's account of the incident in its entirety. So, here's the story as Simantob tells it, as confirmed by The Mesa County Sheriff's Department in Colorado:

"so, my dad and I went on a 3 day father and son river trip and parked the car where we get out of the river to leave, so we get up to the cars and all 4 cars had one window broken and all the valuables taken from the car, so we ended up submitting our case to the near by cop and started on our 5 hour journey home, when we got back i remembered that i had set up the "track my iphone" on the mobileme site and immediately got on and tracked it. it ended up being at a house near by where it was stolen, so i called up the cop that had taken our case and told him where it was located. as soon as i told him the address, he started to laugh, apparently the family had done a few things like this before and the local police had been trying to catch and arrest them but could never get proof that they had been the culprits. now they had proof. so 4 police showed up at the door of this house and ended up getting mine and my dads iphones back along with my wallet and the Garmen GPS, they also were able to recover the two phones and wallet that was taken from the other car that was broken into. so thanks to mobileme we will all be getting our belongings back and a family of criminals will be put in jail."

To recap: Simantob and his father get robbed and his iPhone happens to be one of the stolen items. Find My iPhone tracks down the phone to an exact address, where the police are able to recover the stolen property and arrest the criminals in question. If that story doesn't sell the Find My iPhone feature, than I don't know what will.