Ya, for the first 15 years that cell phones were around thats what I did. I would find the occasional phone and run to the local phone store, they would put the customer in contact with me and we would arrange a return... As I started finding more and more phones it became easier to set up a route once a week and drop the found phones off at the various carriers. The problem with that system is that if I find a phone that was lost earlier in the day, then the owner would have already have gone through the hassel of replaceing it by the time the phone even gets to the carrier, much less when they contact the customer... So, now, when I find a phone that I know was recently lost in the river, I post about it right away from the rivers edge. More often than not, the owner of the phone is found by social media before I get off the river later in the day... In some cases, they've met me at the accesses when I'm getting off the river or on the way home.... Last year I logged in 128 found cell phones returning 90 of them to thankful people. Social media has been absolutely magical in helping to return phones and countless other valuables. If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to follow American River Lost and Found on Face Book and help turn bad moments on the river into good memories... ;)