When Devin Blase lost her bright blue Philadelphia Phillies gym bag full of high-end clothing in a Wooden Center locker room two weeks ago, she began to panic.
Checking with various lost-and-found desks in Wooden and Ackerman Union brought no results.
“I’ve been checking faithfully for the last two weeks, but it hasn’t turned up,” Blase said, resigned to the fact it may never.
A steady stream of misplaced BruinCards, cell phones, eyewear, clothing and other valuables flows into the campus’ many lost-and-found centers daily. Finding some items can be a challenge.
Not finding any success in her search and fearing that her valuables were stolen, Blase resorted to other tactics.
“I’ve been thinking about offering a reward, maybe arranging a meeting where I would exchange money for the bag … without that person having to see me.”
Such spy-movie techniques are not always necessary, though.
When an item lost at UCLA is turned in to campus authorities, it embarks on a journey that can end quickly and peacefully, or more distressingly for some.
“Some people are honest,” said Rachel Monteleone, a fourth-year psychology student and part-time Associated Students UCLA employee who works at the customer service desk in the student store on the B level of Ackerman. “We get a lot of credit cards ““ people leave them at the register ““ and some people bring money.”
The customer service desk on Ackerman’s B level is one of two in the building in charge of lost and found for Ackerman and Kerckhoff Hall. Those are just two of numerous lost-and-found centers across campus.
Many campus buildings have their own lost-and-found centers, located in an administrative office or other common area.
For example, if security guards or janitorial staff find items left in Young Research Library, they are to turn them over to the library’s cashier window, which acts as the building’s lost-and-found department.
Items lost in other buildings, such as those left in lecture halls, may be returned to a less obvious place ““ a departmental office, for instance.
If desperate seekers do not know in which building they lost items or lost them outside of buildings and cannot find their items at any of the nearest lost-and-found centers, they can check with the university’s police department, the eventual halfway house for items that have gone unclaimed for more than three months.
“We’re the main lost and found. All the lost and found comes here eventually,” said Alex Wendt, an emergency medical technician who works the front desk, which doubles as the lost-and-found desk, at UCPD’s temporary headquarters at 11000 Kinross Ave.
According to Wendt, anything turned in that is estimated to be worth $300 or more is booked for safe-keeping. A found-property report is filed for the item, which is put in a storage locker at the police station.
Lost wallets that contain more than $20 in cash are also booked for safe-keeping, and the number of bills and their denominations are recorded.
In order to retrieve a booked item, a person must present evidence of ownership and make an appointment for a property officer to unlock the locker.
But a lost item is not always identified well enough for the owner to be notified.
“If some good Samaritan brings it to the police station, I’ll try to find your information,” Wendt said, adding that the police search for a probable owner’s information “pretty extensively, especially for wallets or cell phones,” using the UCLA directory.
But by the time items end up at the police station, many people have given up the search. If an item is not claimed from UCPD within 90 days, it is disposed of.
Disposal can take on different forms, in line with UCPD’s property disposal guidelines.
Nancy Greenstein, the director of police community services for UCPD, said less expensive items, such as sweatshirts, are donated to charitable organizations.
Items such as bicycles or jewelry that are worth more are often sold, with the money going back to the police department, according to Tom Reynolds, manager of UCLA Emergency Medical Services, the department that operates the lost and found at the police station.
Realizing the current lost-and-found system is somewhat nebulous, UCPD wrote a proposal several years ago to make the system more efficient, Greenstein said.
“Ultimately, we’d like to have it more organized,” she said.
Under the new system, which Greenstein says should be operational this fall, all the lost-and-found centers on campus would enter all their respective lost items into a computer database. People looking for items could then go online and search all of the centers at once, locate items, then go directly to the center holding them.
“We’re trying to simplify the system and make it easy for people to find their lost items,” Greenstein said.
Until the new system is up and running, those looking for lost items can visit lostandfound.ucla.edu and enter a description of what they are looking for. They can also call the university police’s lost-and-found hotline at 310-825-1227.