by Stephanie Bailey
Horizon Reporter
Behind locked doors at the Student Life desk, thermoses, glasses, jewelry and USB drives await retrieval. Lost items at Whatcom Community College can be returned and found upstairs in the Syre building.
Chantel Green, who works at the Student Life desk, said quite a few come looking for lost items every day. Green has seen a variety of items come through the lost and found, everything from the typical three ring binder to an Avatar mask.
On this day, it’s a stuffed teddy bear and kitty that were brought to the lost and found, according to Richard Bruno, who also works at the Student Life desk. There is an unclaimed bra and panties in the cabinet along with a house phone that was left in the library.
When an item is brought to the lost and found, it is recorded into a binder. In this binder there is also an area where students can describe an item that they have lost, in hopes of someone returning it. Though the lost and found items “rarely lineup,” said Tim Pattison, another employee of the Student Life desk, “We do our best to link lost and found.”
However, some lost materials end up in an entirely different building. Wallets, iPods, and anything of value is turned over to the business office, located in the Laidlaw building at the cashier’s window. These valuable items are kept in a much safer location to avoid theft.
The most common item that students come to the lost and found for are textbooks, Green said, but “very rarely do we get text books.”
At the end of the quarter, the contents of the lost and found cabinet that have not been claimed are put in the closet in the storage room. In the past years the contents have been annually donated to charities like Goodwill. This year, there will be a yard sale held in the spring where all of the items can be bought back to raise money for the school.
