iPad Survives Ride Lodged in Car's Bumper

A 23-year-old recent college graduate from Georgia may have just unintentionally had a role in the best commercial for Apple's iPad.

Alexa Crisa, of Marietta, Ga., drove for nearly one hour with a stranger's iPad wedged in the bumper of her Nissan Sentra after the device flew off the roof of another car, bounced onto the roadway and into her car's bumper.

"I went to Target and ran errands with this iPad hanging out of my bumper. I had no clue," Crisa told ABCNews.com. "I'm not even sure how I missed it other than I don't check my bumper for random dislodged electronics."

Crisa was driving last Friday on a residential road in Marietta when another car pulled in front of her. She saw something fly off the car's roof and instinctively hit the brakes of her own car, bracing for impact, but then felt nothing.

It was only after she was back home that she discovered the errant iPad, thanks to her dad.

"My dad came in and said, 'Why is there an iPad in your car,'" Crisa recalled. "I got scared and said, 'Did someone throw something in the sunroof of my car,' and he said, 'No, there's an iPad in the bumper of your car.'"

Crisa raced outside to see for herself that there was, in fact, an iPad lodged in her car. She took a photo because she knew it would be too unreal for anyone she told to believe and posted the photo to her Facebook page, where it spread online and has now been viewed more than two million times.

Crisa's dad, Nick, dislodged the iPad using a hammer and, perhaps the most unreal of all, the iPad still worked and, apart from broken glass on the front, was hardly damaged.

"It was so remarkable that it was thrown from the roof of the car at 40 mph and still looked like that," she said. "It looked like nothing had happened to the back of the iPad."

The iPad's owner had smartly locked his home screen but it left Crisa unable to track him down. On Sunday, after an unsuccessful trip to the Apple store where employees were amazed to hear her story but unable to release the owner's information, a phone number appeared on the home screen.

"The owner used the 'Find my iPhone' app so his number popped up," Crisa said. "I was scared to call him thinking he wouldn't believe me but we had a good laugh."

When they met on Monday to return the device, the iPad's owner, who does not want to be identified, told Crisa he'd left his wallet and iPad on the roof of his car. He found his wallet in his driveway and, eventually, now, his iPad in Crisa's bumper.

The iPad owner got a new iPad through his Apple warranty plan and has offered to pay for the new bumper Crisa now needs for her car.

Crisa describes herself as "Apple-less" when it comes to her own technology profile but says this experience may just drive her to purchase an iPhone herself.

"Now that I have seen this, if they make iPhones as durable as iPads," she said. "But I'm not the one dropping them. I'm just catching them."