By Leyre Quintana
A typical RVCC student backpack with gym socks and food starts to reek pretty quickly. Leave it in the Lost and Found Office located next to the Welcome Center and the smell will become infernal.
“We don’t want stinky stuff in here,” says the security manager Reinhold Woykowski. He calls the part of the room that stores the stinky stuff “the dead area.”
Not only do lunch packs, soda bottles, single gloves, dirty clothes and shoes remain for months, but expensive items like jewelry, eye glasses, books and cell phones stay because nobody claims them. Even license plates have been kept for a while, in case the owners don’t miss them right away.
Almost every day the Lost and Found winds up with things people forget in class or other places on campus. Those belongings will be in safe hands for at least six months in case someone asks for them.
After that, the useful items will be donated to different organizations and the deteriorating ones go to the garbage. According to Woykowski, there is no point in keeping something relatively worthless, such as a the body care kit found a few months ago.
For now, though, it’s still there, if you think it is yours.
Most keys that find their way to the Lost and Found are ultimately claimed. Nevertheless, the couple dozen sets that remain have turned the “dead area.” into an X-File for Woykowski. What those people did when they couldn’t open the car is a mystery to him.
Most people would defend their honesty, but a considerable amount of cash on the floor when no one is looking and there is no Candid Camera in sight is a pretty tempting thing for some. How many people who find a wad of cash with no name on it would turn it in to the security staff?
The anonymous person who found $1,500 in cash last year and brought it to the Lost and Found could say, “I would.” So could the person who turned in $800. Both finds were eventually returned to their owners.
That kind of attitude makes Woykowski believe in people’s kindness. “I would say that 98 percent of people are honest,” he says. Every week, three or four purses are turned in. Even wallets are brought to the Lost and Found. Their owners usually recover them.
But don’t go running to the Lost and Found to pretend you’ve lost money, expensive items or even jewelry. You have to accurately describe the lost article in some detail and sign for it in a record book.“We can’t give them to just anyone,” Woykowski says.
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