Try getting a new sim, and asking to move that number to it. It'll fail, but they can give you the network it's on. If prompted just give an excuse that you are doing this for an elderly neighbour and they wrote their old number down wrong.
Once you have the network, you can contact them about geolocation services 'my name is Anthony Fakename, I lost my phone can you help?'
(, Wed 21 Apr 2021, 17:31, archived)
hardly going to geolocate some random stranger for you are they
(, Wed 21 Apr 2021, 17:40, archived)