(The following story by Monifa Thomas appeared on the Chicago Sun-Times website on July 30.)
CHICAGO — Who gets off a train without taking their dentures with them?
It happens more often than you might think.
That’s one of the stranger things you learn perusing the items absentminded CTA and Metra riders leave behind on trains and buses.
Several pairs of false teeth wind up in the lost and found boxes at Metra’s downtown terminals, Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said.
Other items that Metra employees find pretty often are racy photos and pornography.
And at Union Station’s lost and found, there’s a hat box containing a bra and a prosthetic breast.
CTA riders leave behind interesting knickknacks, too.
Recent additions to the lost and found at the Pink and Blue lines’ 54th/Cermak terminal include a bicycle, a sport coat wrapped in plastic from the cleaners and a computer keyboard missing a computer.
CTA employees have also found plenty of walkers, canes and at least one wheelchair while cleaning trains at the end of a run.
“I don’t know how somebody gets up off the train if they need a walker,” said Gilberto Hernandez, administrative manager for the Red Line. “We see some weird stuff.”
But most of the lost-and-found loot is pretty pedestrian.
On the CTA Blue Line, for example, luggage and student book bags make up the bulk of what’s found, since trains go to O’Hare Airport and the University of Illinois at Chicago, said Keith Tuck, an administrative manager for the line.
Cell phones, iPods and prescription medication are also common. And on rainy days, umbrellas turn up in droves.
While the city’s airports auction off lost and confiscated items for cash, the CTA either throws things out or gives them to the rider or employee who found them, if the owner doesn’t show up within a certain time period.
Less valuable items are thrown out after 30 days. A laptop or a cell phone might be held for 60 days.
But Tuck said “with laptops, cameras, things of that nature, the owners are pretty aggressive in trying to find it. So those don’t stay around long.”
Lost money, on the other hand, is usually a lost cause.
“You want to think the public is really forthright in turning in a wallet with $400, but oftentimes, the wallet is what’s turned in,” Tuck said.
Roxanne Atkins is a happy exception. Atkins, of Bronzeville, left her passport, wallet and $1,000 laptop on a Red Line train two weeks ago.
“I was just panicked. I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking, ‘Oh, God, what have I done?'” she said.
The next morning, Atkins got word that her bag had been found by a CTA employee at the 95th Street terminal. Atkins had boarded at Grand.
“I just can’t believe everything made it all the way to 95th Street,” she said. “You hear so many negative stories about people, but I feel really fortunate.”