Just an FYI, I did a search to see if it's possible to ping your phone from a remote location. For instance, I'm in NY city, can I send a message and have the phone ping from let's say, Wyoming? Apparently, it's not uncommon for phones to ping from a tower that's farther away if there's a lot of traffic on the closer tower, but that's within a 30 mile radius. However, they did mention one case where a man who lived in Palo Alto called someone on his cell phone and it pinged in Palo Alto, but then 9 mins later he made another cell phone call and it pinged from Maui (see State of CA v Bulos Zumot) "The defendant’s cell tower records showed an incoming call placing the defendant near a tower in Lahaina, Maui, and within nine minutes of that call, a previous call placed the defendant in Palo Alto. Because of this “flaw” in AT&T’s system, by all rights, the defendant received the first call from a tower on the island of Maui, some 3,000 miles away." So although her phone pinged in Idaho, I'd wonder if the phone was actually there.
What Your Cell Phone Can’t Tell the Police