On a typical morning, Director of Facilities Robert Thom walks through the commons with his eyes peeled for missing items. It is roughly 8:20 a.m., or what Thom calls “gathering time,” when students converge in the commons shortly before class starts. Thom spots a discarded sweatshirt and a missing jacket. He stops to pick them up.
“I really enjoy trying to be a hero,” Thom said.
After Thom finds the items, he carries them to the main office. Most items found at UPrep are placed in the lost and found. The items Thom and the maintenance team find amount to potentially hundreds in savings for students who are able to claim their stuff. Lost and found is crucial for students missing items ranging from normal to quirky.
“They forget their undies. They’re like randomly there,” Letisia Chavez, main office coordinator, said.
These items, such as underwear are, however, thrown away, according to Chavez.
“Some of them are wet and gross. We don’t save it if it smells,” main office coordinator Sashil Pillay said.
On campus, there are multiple locations that act as a lost and found; missing water bottles and lunch boxes are put on a shelf near the microwaves in the commons. Any items left in the gym are stored in bins in either locker room. Any other items are brought to the main lost and found in the front office.
“We have the hub here in the office,” Chavez said.
Unclaimed items were donated to Ridwell, with the most recent donation occurring during midwinter break and the next taking place during spring break. The front office staff is currently looking for another donation location, as Ridwell stopped taking items due to heavy traffic flow.
“[Almost] every month it goes out,” Pillay said. “But if there is a name [on an item], we keep it here and we email the students, ‘Hey, come and grab it.’ If not either me or Letisia, we hand deliver them.”
Sometimes it is easier to identify who lost the items.
“I just wish more students would put their name on things,” Pillay said.
Junior Evan Filby found a set of retainers without a name.
“I was in the boys bathroom, and in the stall, someone left their retainers, like, on top of the toilet paper holder,” Filby said. “And I was just genuinely so confused why you would ever have to, like, take your retainers out there and leave them there, and how you would forget them.”
He did not take the retainers. He left them in the bathroom and posted about them on Schoology.
“I did not need retainers at the time,” Filby said.
No one responded to Filby’s Schoology post. The retainers would have amounted to hundreds of dollars lost for the student unable to retrieve them.
“Nobody ever comes to claim their retainers,” Chavez said.
Junior Landon Velan has never claimed missing retainers from the lost and found. He has also never lost retainers at school.
“I don’t bring my retainers to school,” Velan said.
Velan however, has claimed a misplaced jacket from the lost and found.
“I was looking for my jacket, and I pulled out one jacket, like, ‘Oh, this has gotta be mine.’ I look down and there’s three more of the same kind of jacket in the same box,” Velan said.
Velan felt surprised by seeing the jackets.
“Are they multiplying?” Velan said.
Velan estimates he was able to save $80 by finding the jacket. He was, however, unsure if the jacket he found was his.
“All I know is they were all the same size,” Velan said. “So somebody could have taken one of the jackets and it could have been mine. But they were all the same size. And one smelled funky, so I didn’t grab that one, even though it might have been mine.”
An anonymous ninth grade student, given the pseudonym Jane, took a charger that did not belong to her from lost and found.
“My computer was dying, and I needed to charge it,” Jane said.
Pillay believes students taking other’s items shouldn’t be a major issue.
“Our students are very honest. They will come for their right stuff. If it’s not theirs, they will bring it back,” Pillay said.
This was not the case for Jane.
“I still have it actually,” Jane said. “It’s in my house.”
Thom feels that a lost and found will always be present in a school.
“There’s always going to be lost. There’s always going to be found,” Thom said.
