Surprises surface in Las Vegas hotel’s lost and found

You could make up a good reason why someone brings a piano keyboard to Las Vegas and then leaves it behind in his hotel room.

Maybe a musician came out for an audition, failed to get the gig and, in disgust, decided to give up on music for good.

While a bit far-fetched, it's a possible theory. But why would someone ever bring to a hotel and then leave a cinder block in the room? Or a prosthetic leg, a garden hose or a car tire?

That's a tough question even David de Leon, Treasure Island's keeper of the lost and found, can't answer.

"Those are the things we shake our head at when they come through lost and found," says de Leon, the hotel's security chief. "When you get the interesting ones, you go, 'Wow, you don't see that every day.' "

Yes, all of those items have been among the thousands of "valuables" found every year at Treasure Island and turned in to lost and found. Surprisingly, or not, none of them was reclaimed by its rightful owner. The piano and leg were donated to charity. Everything else was destroyed.

They're among the more unique things de Leon has seen in his nearly 20 years in security. Mostly, he deals with the mundane. Last year, 18,519 items were processed through lost and found; over 80 percent were returned to owners.

Among them? Anything you can imagine taking on a trip; that's the stuff that gets left behind. Pillows, jackets, shirts, belts, socks, purses, prescription medications, jewelry and even food. Not much has changed in lost and found over the years., he says.

What he sees the most? Cellphone chargers. That's the No. 1 item left behind in the hotel's rooms.

Mondays are and always have been the busiest day for lost and found. Popular spots tend to be areas such as drawers -- guests check in, unpack and then forget to pack up their belongings -- under beds and in bathrooms. Guests hide their jewelry in tissue boxes and then forget it. They even pack their suitcases and leave them sitting on the bed.

"You'd be surprised how many times people leave their baggage behind," de Leon says.

Of course, it has to be opened for safety reasons and to try to identify its owner. Sometimes, de Leon says, the suitcase is filled with the hotel's property: towels, soaps, bathrobes.

When an item is found, it's logged into the lost and found logbook and the staff goes to work trying to find its owner.

Items are held based on their value. For instance, a cellphone charger gets a free 14-day stay in lost and found. Anything valued between $100 and $500 gets held for 30 days. Belongings worth $10,000 or more trigger an investigation and will be held as long as 90 days.

"We want to hold it and return it to you. If you contact us, we even send it back free of charge," de Leon says.

"We're mailing, cataloging, disposing continuously. Otherwise, we'd run out of room in the lost and found storage."

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at
spadgett@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4564.