A New York City man was so desperate to retrieve his lost iPhone that he jumped onto subway tracks to save it from being carried off by a rat. OK, maybe a rat wouldn't really be interested unless it was slimed with pizza sauce. But that doesn't change the fact that the gentleman involved risked his life for his iPhone.It's a hard call to make (pun intended). If you drop something down onto subway tracks, what do you do? If it were a glove or a hat, I say let it go. But a $400 iPhone? Bijan Rezvani decided it was worth a death-defying leap down onto the tracks. Here's the story in his words:

Well, I was on my way back from this wacky 8-bit festival thing in Chelsea and as we came down into the platform the train arrived, so we hurried. We went down a few stops and had to get out for some service BS (I have no idea). We got back into the train and I realized that my phone, which had been in my pocket, was no longer there. We looked everywhere. We waited 15 or 20 minutes or so and headed back 4 or 5 stops or however many to where we had boarded. Looked outside, looked around, and couldn't find it. Anyway, so we left messages and texts with it and decided all we could do was go home. We were standing on the platform waiting for the train when my friend said, "Isn't that your phone down there?" It was. So I got it.

Stupid or stupendous? I dunno. The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority notes that it is illegal for people to jump down onto tracks for any reason. There's the possibility of being hit by an oncoming train (not pretty) or being electrocuted by the third rail (crispy!). If an article is dropped onto the tracks, passengers are supposed to ask an MTA attendant for help. According to Rezvani, it was 2 or 3 in the morning, so help was likely not going to arrive any time soon.

The reason Rezvani took the chance?

Well, first of all it's an expensive piece of hardware. Too expensive for me, but Steve [Jobs] owns my soul. Content was a major issue too...mainly contacts, but also photos. It's the first time I've had a cool phone that does anything and also the first time I've gone around taking photos of things in my life, so the stuff I had captured was kind of important for me to keep. I also cropped a couple hundred wallpapers for it so that would've been gone. A big issue was sort of a privacy one...I didn't like the idea of someone looking at my photos or of someone being able to text people in my list or read my conversations with friends, etc. The prospect of paying for another phone (by necessity the cheapest offered) didn't thrill me either.

So there you have it. The story of a man so dedicated to (or addicted to, you decide) his iPhone that he wouldn't let the prospect of death stand in his way to get it back.

He's not the first to dare such a feat for a piece of technology, and he probably won't be the last. The question is, who will succeed at fending off the Grim Reaper, and who won't?