THE season of goodwill has come early for a Thai woman who lost her iPad while on holiday enjoying the delights of North Yorkshire.

Thanomsup Khopermklang – known to her friends as Jukjik – thought she would never see the device again after she returned to her home nearly 6,000 miles away.

But now the two have been re-united – thanks to the dogged efforts of a local PC and the trans-global appeal of Twitter.

Jukjik mislaid her iPad while staying in North Yorkshire over a month ago and it was eventually passed to police in Harrogate as a piece of lost property.

But instead of just waiting for someone to claim it, PC Ed Rogerson was convinced that social media could help find its owner.

Using photographs which were accessible without logging on to the device, PC Rogerson found a photo of a flight ticket and several photographs of who he believed was the owner.

He then tweeted a photo of the owner, which was re-tweeted by more than 2,000 people, and used Twitter’s search facility to find the name on the plane ticket.

The search led to an inactive Twitter account in the owner’s name and by contacting one of her followers, PC Rogerson was able to make contact with the owner.

“When I started to try and locate the owner of the iPad I had no idea that she'd be in Thailand,” said PC Rogerson.

“But thanks to the power of social media I was able to identify her, make contact with her and arrange to get the property returned.

“The response from the on-line community was amazing. Thank you to everybody on Twitter who assisted by re-tweeting and giving me tips on how to locate her."

Back home in the Nakhon Ratchasima province of Thailand, Jukjik was delighted to be re-united with the device she thought she had lost for good.

“I was very, very pleased and very happy when I heard that my iPad had been found,” she said.

“I can’t believe they managed to track me down just through Twitter.

“Now I can see all the photos I took when I was in England and have a nice reminder of my holiday. A big thank you to PC Rogerson and North Yorkshire Police.”

*Any lost items which can store data such as computers and mobile phones are destroyed if they remain unclaimed, to protect the personal data contained on the device.