Lost and Found: Digging for treasure at CF Polo Park

You just got home from a long day at the mall. You’re exhausted and relieved to finally put your feet up, when all of a sudden you panic.

Where’s my wallet?

Your mind starts racing, checking every corner of your house and car until it hits you. You left it at the mall.

Talking to Guest Services at Polo Park, this kind of thing happens all the time. People can be forgetful, especially when dragging around seven shopping bags and four kids.

“The most common items we see lost are new purchases, cellphones, wallets and purses. Mostly the new purchases though,” explained Christina Baerr, Supervisor of Guest Services at CF Polo Park. “They put it down on a bench, put it down in a store, buy some more items, grab their bags and they miss one.”

This time of year isn’t the busiest for lost items. This may come as no surprise, but the cupboards at Guest Services are packed with new purchases around Christmas.

According to Baerr, roughly 75 per cent of lost items are eventually reunited with its owner. If it goes unclaimed after about a month, it goes into storage, and four times a year trucks come by to pick up forgotten goods to take them to places like the Salvation Army or Ronald McDonald House.

“We’ve had strollers left in the parking lot, crutches, a children’s sled, car seats, we’ve had somebody’s dentures, we’ve had a cat,” said Baerr. “About six years ago, somebody had found a very young cat near the doors of the mall. It stayed with security for most of the day and was taken to the vet to get checked out. One of the mall employees went to the vet and ended up adopting the cat. Named it Polo.”

Baerr keeps track of all the lost items in a huge but meticulously organized binder, heavy enough to cause significant pain if you dropped it on your foot.

There are nine categories in the binder, each marked with its own coloured divider: wallets and purses; debit and credit cards; valuables; electronics, meaning cellphones and various accessories to go with; eyeglasses; non-valuable jewellery; miscellaneous items; used clothing; and new purchases.

“We need a description before we even pull out the item, especially if it were a cellphone. If it’s password protected, we’ll hold the phone and have you put in the code,” Baerr explained. “We go to the book. The book holds everything. We go to the book, look up the item, if we think it might be, we ask for some more information, we pull it out, and hopefully we reunite.”

A small section of the binder keeps track of items that people have lost but have not been found, but the majority is either items they have at Guest Services or recently claimed items. It’s a lot of paper, but it’s a well-oiled machine, and when someone tries to game the system, they don’t get away with it.

“One day I had the book open and they were describing the item, and they were looking over the counter at the book. But they didn’t see that in highlighter it said ‘claimed’ on it. I closed the book, said we didn’t have their item, and they walked away quite sheepishly.”

On this day in early September, the cupboards contain some jackets, a sweater, an umbrella, and a really weird green ball that will likely wind up at Ronald McDonald House. There’s a bin of keys, most of which are claimed within a day, a bottle of prescription pills, and a safe containing a few wallets.

“We’ve had people in tears, people have hugged the staff, right over top of the tall counter, big embrace,” Baerr recounted. “It feels wonderful, just knowing that we’ve been able to help. We don’t always know the story behind it, especially the sentimental ones. You get a lot of people who say, ‘I doubt it’s been turned in but…’ and then they give the description and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that was turned in an hour ago.’ They’re just over the moon.”