Police and shopping centres have laid out thousands of dollars of brand new and loved items which have been handed in, as part of international Lost and Found Day.
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“Car keys and phones are probably the biggest ones,” said Sturt Mall Administration Manager Rebekah Farrugia.
“In many cases people come to us saying they’ve lost their keys, only to call back saying they’ve found them still in the lock, in the shopping centre car park,” Ms Ferrugia said.
Shopping Malls keep items for around three months before the are forced to offload them to charity groups such as St Vincent de Paul because they simply don’t have the room.
“We have brand new clothes still with the tags on, toys, medicines, you name it,” Ms Feruggia said.
“Especially toys, we get a lot of distressed parents calling up about lost bunnies so it’s good when we can reunite them with their owner.”
Lost And Found Day is celebrated on the second Friday of every December and is designed to encourage people to have a look for the things they’ve lost, and return items found to their rightful owner.
While the official day has only been internationally recognised since 2012, it dates back to 1805 when Napoleon Bonaparte opened the first Lost and Found office in Paris, France.
Police have a “mountain of stuff” which they regularly have to get rid of because their police stations and warehouses cannot keep up with the volume.
Wagga Police Inspector Adrian Telfer said an unusual item lost is pushbikes.
“We have a huge amount of property, we have many, many bikes and this is just a small proportion of what we get,” Inspector Telfer said.
“The amount of keys that get handed in is amazing especially when some of them will cost the owner more than $400 to replace.”
The public is encouraged to retrace their steps, and if they can’t find their items, to contact police or supermarkets in the hope that they can get their property back.