BART’s lost and found department, a large room at the 12th Street station, is cramped. This is the first thing one notices.
Then you’ll see: shelves of cellphones, a bin of passports, a bucket full of car keys, books (and more books), and, on this particular day, two ukuleles tucked in a corner.
Of course there are also wallets, jackets, basketballs, purses, a hard hat and a hockey mask.
BART riders who lose something on one of the hundreds of trains that traverse 131.4 miles of Bay Area tracks might assume they’ll never see whatever they lost again. Yet, when BART employees sweep trains at end-of-the-line stations (Richmond’s is one of those), personal items are sent to the Oakland facility, presided over by supervisor Tency Chavez, who’s responsible for a complex web of shelving, tagging, and reuniting.
“ ‘Oh my God, I left my bag on the train!’ ” Chavez said, acting out the part of a distraught BART rider.
BART lost and found
Here’s what to do if you lose something on a BART train:
- Fill out this form.
- If it’s at the lost and found department, located at the Oakland 12th Street Station, 1245 Broadway St., BART will let you know how to retrieve it.
- The lost and found is open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from noon to 2 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
- Unclaimed items are periodically auctioned off at propertyroom.com.
Lost items are the responsibility of the station agent. Agents tag items with the date and location found, noting any distinguishing features (an especially stripy purse, for example, or “an iPhone cover with psychedelic Hello Kitty stickers,” Chavez said).
Then, Chavez and her coworkers sort the items into bins. Phones are categorized by cell carrier, address books by date found, scarves on one shelf and accessories on another. They get some strange items.
“How do you leave your luggage?” BART transportation manager Brandi Taylor said. “How are you making it? Are you going shopping?”
In the first eight months of 2018, the last date for which statistics are available, BART employees tagged 26,898 lost items, 4,000 of them cell phones.
They’ve processed wheelchairs and strollers, cleaning supplies and credit cards, and, most recently, a backpack containing $5,000 in cash.
“You can imagine someone being very frantic,” Chavez said.
For a transportation network that serves two major airports, stadiums, and festivals, along with several large metropolitan downtowns and countless suburbs, commuters’ lost items can reveal the everyday banality of Bay Area life.
“You understand the diversity of the community that we serve,” Taylor said. “You see the goings and comings of people. The normal day-to-day of how BART’s integrated with people’s lives.”
There are seasonal trends, Chavez said: toys around Christmas time, umbrellas in the rainy season.
Patrons have three months to pick up their lost items before BART sends them to an online auction website, propertyroom.com, with the proceeds going to BART. Those seeking a lost item must fill out a form to document it. Employees then try to match these reports with the found items, and if it’s a match they will contact the item’s owner.
How effective is BART’s lost and found department?
BART’s lost and found has inspired its own Subreddit, and the reviews are mixed.
“I’ve lost a few items on BART,” Rebootkid wrote a year ago. “Never gotten a single one back from Lost&Found.”
This reporter, who was new to the area during his summer internship with Richmondside, got some firsthand experience leaving something on a BART train.
He had taken the red line to San Francisco when he realized he hopped off without his favorite hat.
Alas, he wasn’t among one of the lucky ones to find something cherished at the BART lost and found.
Another Subreddit user, electron_c (whose post implied they were a BART employee), recounted finding a wallet with $400 and a driver’s license. It belonged to a professional ice skater from Australia who picked it up later.
“Lots of things are lost forever,” electron_c wrote, “but not everything.”
