Chicago O’Hare Airport Lost and Found

Did you forget something?

Got your wallet, purse, phone or diaper bag? Lose a glove? Credit card missing? Where’s your laptop?

If you were a traveler or explorer in the city over the holidays, you may have had unfortunate moments of absent-mindedness and are now a bag lighter and shielded against the cold by only one mitten. That’s why we recently asked local attractions, airports and transportation hubs to describe what items can commonly be found in their lost and found areas. And, more important, how to retrieve those items.

1,600 – Number of laptops left at Chicago O’Hare International Airport lost and found checkpoints in 2015; Midway Airport reported 350 left behind.

An item left behind at the airport can be tricky to recover, because any number of entities could be responsible for handling a lost and found item.

Transportation Security Administration spokesman Michael McCarthy says a passenger can’t make enough calls to track down a lost item. “If a passenger misplaces an item but cannot recall where it was misplaced they should try to contact every entity from the hotel to the taxicab to the TSA to the airline,” he said recently in an email.

McCarthy notes that the most common items found at security checkpoints are laptops, driver’s licenses or other forms of identification, keys and clothing (type depending on the season).

“The best thing a passenger can do is to tape their contact information or a business card to their laptop or tablet. This greatly increases (their) chances of recovering an item as we can attempt to call the individual.” — McCarthy, on how to prepare items for the TSA screening process

What’s the weirdest item McCarthy has seen in the TSA lost and found? “For my purposes, I always find it off to find the entire carry-on bag,” he said.

After 30 days: An unclaimed item is turned over to the Illinois Department of Central Management Services as surplus property, which could be auctioned. Items with an estimated worth of $500 or more are sent to TSA headquarters in Arlington, Va. Those items could be auctioned by the General Services Administration. Electronic devices that could contain sensitive material — including thumb drives, cellphones and laptops — are sent to TSA headquarters where they are wiped of content and then disposed of.