Grieving Toronto mother devastated by loss of photos, notes after replacing her iPhone

A Toronto woman says she put her trust in Apple experts, but lost her irreplaceable notes and photos of her dead son.

Sunnie McFadden-Curtis lost her 38-year-old son in a drowning accident a few weeks ago. She said as she was planning his celebration of life, her new iPhone broke down.

“I was dealing with that and within a few days of that, my phone stopped working,” McFadden-Curtis said.

READ MORE: What you need to know about Apple’s iCloud Photo Library service

She took her phone to an Apple store in a Toronto mall and was told it needed to be replaced.

“Before I left, I specifically asked him, ‘Are you positive that everything is going to go to the iCloud?’” McFadden-Curtis said, referring to the customer service representative she was dealing with at the store. “He assured me.”

She said she was told to go home while her phone was being backed up, but claims her data never made it to iCloud. McFadden-Curtis said she lost thousands of important notes, including the eulogy for her son, passwords and work-related material. She said she would have almost daily, lengthy calls with Apple care staff who managed to retrieve some of her lost data.

“It was over the course of about three weeks during the most difficult time of my entire life,” McFadden-Curtis said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "It was over the course of about three weeks during the most difficult time of my entire life," McFadden-Curtis said.

She said the staff offered her $200 to purchase something from their online store, something McFadden-Curtis said she was “quite insulted by.”

Technology expert Marc Saltzman said technology isn’t foolproof and there are many opportunity where things can go wrong.

“Unfortunately when you’re dealing with technology, something can happen along the way, whether it’s uploading from the device to the internet and bringing it back down again,” he said, while encouraging consumers to be proactive and have multiple back-up systems.

READ MORE: Apple’s iCloud service up and running following outage

McFadden-Curtis said she is not technology-savvy and said she trusted the experts to protect what’s important.

“In a situation like this, if I don’t take care of myself or go that one step further, I know they don’t have my back and they didn’t have my back in this situation,” she said.

“I have to advocate for myself.”

Global News reached out to Apple officials, who did not provide official comment or an explanation, except to say they will follow-up with the customer directly.