Lost & Found
Milicent Obbards
Cell phones, thumb drives, iPods and calculators are just a few of the many unclaimed items collecting in MCC’s lost and found campus stash. Paychecks, retainers, keys, textbooks, sunglasses, personal documents, money, jewelry, shoes and skateboards were also among the escalating loot.Over 600 items, varying in value, have been turned into MCC’s lost and found since the start of the spring semester. According to Public Safety Dispatch Supervisor, Veronica Padilla, an average of five to 10 items were turned in daily.
“We take all accounts to link an item to an individual. If it is a folder, we can hopefully retrieve a name of a student. If it is a thumb drive, we will access the files hoping to identify the owner,” Padilla said.
Despite efforts of honest citizens and campus security, unclaimed property was piling up in Public Safety.
Students are encouraged to contact Public Safety to report lost items, allowing students and staff the opportunity to work together to retrieve missing property.
“With the amount of keys turned in on this campus, I don’t know how students are getting home,” Padilla said.
Items turned over to campus security were logged, labeled and stored.
Item identification includes a brief description and the location where the item was found.
If lost and found items are not claimed, they are then added to an accumulating stockpile that awaits ownership.
The MCC Center for Service Learning hosts an annual sale that showcases these items.
Valuable pieces of property, such as iPods, will be up for grabs during the Third Annual Lost and Found Sale and Silent Auction held in the Zuni Room at the Kirk Center in December.
Proceeds from the silent auction and the sale go towards scholarships and grants made available to MCC students involved in Service-Learning projects.
Last year’s proceeds were over $2,000, providing 20 scholarships to MCC students.
If students dislike the idea of buying back their misplaced items, they are encouraged to be proactive and aware of lost and found services and preventative action.
Simple steps such as creating and saving a Word document titled “please return if found” and including contact information within, will increase the chances of having the misplaced thumb drive returned promptly.
Updating personal contact information via the My MCC website will ensure campus security has current information should they need to contact students.
Post-it notes, or unique markings on a random page will help students and Public Safety officers identify expensive textbooks as their own.
“I wish students would write their names in their books, we have $100 textbooks here and no one ever comes to claim them,” Padilla said.
Issues associated with the loss of textbooks, and more specifically in the case of theft, campus security encourages these unique markings as it helps all parties involved to properly identify the rightful owner.
To utilize the lost and found services or to turn an item in, Public Safety is located in the Social and Life Sciences Building, on the southwest side of the Southern and Dobson campus.
For more information about scholarships and grants generated from lost and found proceeds, please see the Center for Service-Learning located in the Kirk Center.
