ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis man’s quest to find his lost AirPods took a turn he never anticipated. Somehow, unknown to him, the AirPods ended up thousands of miles away from home in Iraq.

Billy Jansen recently tracked his lost AirPods in Najaf, Iraq, through Apple’s “Find My” service.

He shared of his discovery on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and it took him on quite a global adventure. It caught the attention of millions worldwide, and his initial post of the tracked AirPods generated more than 3,000 reposts.

“I swear the most random stuff blows up on this site,” said Billy jokingly after learning of his viral AirPods post.

How did the AirPods make it overseas? That’s a months-long mystery. At the very least, Billy knows how it may have started.

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He tells FOX 2, “I last saw the AirPods in January at [Lambert] Airport. I was able to track them for a few weeks in late January at a nearby middle school, but then they dropped off the map entirely.”

Earlier this week, Billy opened up the “Find My” service to help his daughter find her misplaced AirPods. That’s when he learned the fate of his missing AirPods.

“I opened up my ‘Find My’ app this week and noticed my lost AirPods were showing a location again, all of a sudden, but they were thousands of miles away,” said Billy. “That’s when I decided to see where they were, and I laughed out loud when the map flew halfway across the earth to Iraq.”

Over the last several days, Billy has tracked his AirPods at several different locations within the city of Najaf, Iraq. He’s shared several screenshots in a thread of his original X post, which has helped him connect with several people overseas.

“These last few days have been so entertaining,” said Billy. “I have had hundreds of conversations with people from Najaf that have said they would either go looking for them or even have offered to buy me a new pair and send them to me. The amount of kindness has been astounding, even from over 6,700 miles away.”

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Billy says he replaced the AirPods he originally lost earlier this year. He’s unsure if he will ever be reunited with the lost pair of AirPods, but he says the kindness people in Iraq have shown is even more important.

Technology studies estimate, on average, that one out of every six people who have ever used AirPods has lost one AirPod or both parts of the pair at some point in their lifetime.

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