Disneyland hunts for owners of lost stuff

By: Associated Press - | Tuesday, April 10, 2007 6:56 PM PDT ∞

ANAHEIM - All sorts of things turn up at Disneyland's lost-and-found department: Besides 40,000 hats and 20,000 eyeglasses recovered each year, passports, a glass eye, even a toilet seat, have been found.

Kay McFaul, 85, who retired as the 20-year head of the amusement park's lost-and-found department, remembers the woman who lost her glass eye 25 years ago on Main Street. McFaul immediately headed for the street-sweeper lot.

"I ran out to the street-sweeper area and found the workers playing marbles with the eyeball," McFaul says. "They didn't know it was a prosthetic."

Now, it's Betsy Chan's job to hunt down owners of lost items. Many of the 200,000 items turned in annually are reunited with rightful owners due in large part to Chan's sleuthing.

She sifts through bags of lost-and-found keys, searching for attached car-rental tags or miniature grocery-store cards that can be traced to the owners. She also makes calls on misplaced cellular telephones to find contact numbers.

Park officials said 70 percent of the found articles are returned within one day.

The Disneyland store room is full of unclaimed items that include oxygen tanks, dentures, shoes, jewelry and clothing. There's even a $5,000 electric wheelchair.

No one ever claimed the long-lost toilet seat or a leg cast.

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