A grieving mum can see her tragic daughter’s last messages from beyond the grave after a successful repair to her mobile phone which she dropped down the LOO.
Dawn Cubin lost daughter Hannah – her only child – at the age of just 14 when she suddenly died from an undetected heart condition in December.
She took comfort from the texts she still had from her on her mobile phone – until it accidentally fell into the toilet.
The pair had exchanged thousands of messages on Whatsapp and text message, but 40 were particularly special.
One read: “Going to bed now. Night, night. Love you. See you in the morning. xxx” while others were more “mundane” but still “meant the world” to Dawn.
The phone also included dozens of messages of support from friends and family as well as precious videos and photos which were saved to the sim card.
Dawn, 51, fished the phone out of the water and desperately tried to dry it off in a bowl of rice but without success.
She then took it to a local repair shop but feared she had lost the treasured texts for good.
Owner Adie Lanc worked through the night and to Dawn’s delight he called her the following day to say he had recovered ALL the messages.
Dawn, of Cruwdell, Wilts., said: “I was really upset when my phone went down the loo as Hannah’s messages and those of love and support from so many people were lost.
“When I’m in a really bad place I look back at those messages and I feel the love of the people and it gives me a bit of a boost to put one foot in front of the other and carry on.
“Hannah’s messages are part of the treasured memories I have which are not just in my mind.
“Along with some of her favourite belongings, the messages, photographs and videos are the only physical items we have left.
“Without any optimism for retrieval I took my phone to iFixer in Chippenham, who has mended various devices over the years.
“I explained how important the messages were and he said he would do his best but wasn’t at all hopeful.
“He worked late Thursday night desperately trying to restore my phone and he called me on Friday to say he had done it.
“I burst out crying when he told me but I don’t know what I would do if I had lost them.”
Teen Hannah died on December 10 last year from an idiopathic cardiac fibrosis of the left ventricle despite being “super fit” and a black belt in Taekwondo.
Dawn, married to Andy, 54, a Captain with British Airways, recalled: “She was a strong young girl and even trained that very morning.
“I dropped her off at her friend’s house at five o’clock and at 10.55pm I received a phone call from her friend saying ‘I’m sorry, there’s something wrong with Hannah and she’s not breathing’.
“I jumped in the car and raced to the house which is luckily only a few minutes away.
“The front door was open, I ran upstairs and into her friend’s bedroom.
“Hannah was on the floor under the window gasping for breath and her friend’s mother was doing CPR.
“She had fallen unconscious while she was sitting on a friend’s bed, she was on a video chat at the time.
“I took over and there was no break in the CPR until ambulance crews arrived five minutes later.
“They used a defibrillator twice on Hannah and their medical bags were completely empty once they’d left.”
She added: “Seven months on, there’s not 100% of me that believes what has happened.
“It was the most unexpected, shocking situation that we could have ever imagined. There was no intervention from anyone and no wrongdoing.”
Every week in the UK at least 12 young people die of undiagnosed heart conditions and 80% of them display no symptoms at all, says Dawn.
“It’s disgusting that parents in the UK are not even given a leaflet to be tested,” she added.
“We were diligent parents but testing for heart conditions was never mentioned to us.
“Saving one life will be Hannah’s legacy of life.”
Repairer Adie said: “Dawn told me her story and I really felt for her and I knew I had to get it working again.
“It was always going to be a hard repair, as so many things can go wrong with water damaged phones but luckily the phone wasn’t dead.
“After hearing about the circumstances, I didn’t want it to cost Dawn anything.”
Dawn has since backed up her phone and is now setting up a memorial fund called Hannah’s Hope for Hearts in association with Cardiac Risk In The Young (CRY).
The family hope that the fund can pay for a mobile testing unit which will cost £80,000.
Hannah was part of a taekwondo team for seven years and competed in the World Championships in July last year.
She passed her black belt grading in October last year.
