Did you lose your booze, teeth or Trump hat at Miami airport? There’s a way to find them

It’s a traveler’s nightmare: You’re running late to catch your flight so you rush through check-in and security, dash to your gate and barely make it on the plane as the door shuts. Phew! But as your flight reaches cruising altitude, heading for South America or Southern California, you reach into your pockets and start to panic.

Where’s my credit card? My wallet? Oh, my God, my teeth!

At Miami International Airport, Evelio Zuriarrain, terminal operations supervisor, and his staff can help you get you through that ordeal.

Miami airport’s Lost and Found office is far from sight, tucked away on the fourth floor of Concourse D. But it can be a lifesaver.

Step inside and you’ll see dozens of shelves of thousands of personal belongings left behind — cellphones, handbags and everything else. You’ll find things commonly forgotten like blankets or umbrellas. But also bottles of liquor bought at duty free shops in Haiti and Nicaragua, a prayer book in Hebrew, even somebody’s walker. There are hundreds of baseball caps, too, including a MAGA one, and a surprising number of suitcases and laptops.

With the winter holidays underway, the Miami airport expects a surge in passengers. MIA estimates surpassing last year’s record of 50.7 million passengers by the end of 2023.

Bu that’s not the only record it expects to tie or break before the year ends.

Through November, Lost and Found had cataloged 36,800 items. By comparison, for the full year 2022, it logged 41,800 items.

Zuriarrain, in an interview with the Miami Herald said, “I think we’re going to hit that number or surpass it this year.” Miami airport’s pre-pandemic high was 38,500 items.

Zuriarrain’s duties include overseeing the airport’s Lost and Found.

Last year on Thanksgiving, just as Zuriarrain was closing the office to have a meal with staff, a woman in tears showed up, he said. She was connecting on a flight to her father’s memorial service where she was to give the eulogy. But she misplaced her journal where she had written down her thoughts. Zuriarrain ran over to the terminal while she waited outside the Lost and Found office. A cleaning worker had found the journal in the restroom near Gate H-15.

Also last year, a concert cellist who arrived at MIA from Montreal panicked after losing his laptop which contained recordings and videos of his previous concerts. Using the Find Me option, he detected that his laptop was somewhere in Concourse J. Airport employees and the Lost and Found office tracked it down and returned it to him.

The Miami Herald visited the airport’s Lost and Found office this past week, where Zuriarrain discussed what you should do if you lose something and why you may want to avoid third-party vendors to search for your missing items.

Below are excerpts:

Are there any new rules this year at the Lost and Found?

No new rules but with the use of technology increasing, there are now a lot of websites out there that are legal and are third-party sites that offer to search for your lost items for a fee. If you log on to their site, it’s like $40. It’s basically a filers fee because what they do is turn around and file a lost item claim report with us.

I want to make clear that Miami International Airport does not charge at all to file a claim, nor does it charge to search for items, find items or store items. The only time the owner [of the item] pays is when shipping is involved.

I would like people to know that they can go directly to our website. Even if you live outside of Miami or Florida, you can file a claim there for no cost. Under Passenger Info, click under Lost and Found. They can also call 1-888-335-0690, our number, and report an item through there.

People should be careful because when they search on sites like Google, the money-making sites will be prioritized. And you don’t necessarily get MIA right at the top.

What’s the time limit for keeping items?

We keep items for 30 days. That’s what the state of Florida allows for airports. We do keep jewelry for 60 days. After that, we send unclaimed items to Goodwill.

We get a lot of stuff, and we have a finite space.

Where do you receive items from?

Anything left inside the airport in the main terminals, in the employee shuttle, the rental car center, buses for passengers, or parking garages. Anything left on the plane goes back to the airline.

TSA checkpoints are a big source for us. We get items 24 hours after they have been left there.

So, remember to pick up your belongings.

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Do you get more items than you catalog?

We get a lot more items than we can catalog individually.

There are items such as random keys, hats, sunglasses, glasses, neck pillows, and umbrellas for which it’s very difficult to pinpoint the owner, unless it has a distinct feature.

We have them all in our office. So, if someone says they lost their keys, we have a bin of keys, and they can search through it with our staff standing by. It’s the same with hats, neck pillows, etc.

What items are most commonly lost?

Electronic devices, Phones, iPads, and laptops. The most common item is the Apple AirPods. Those are the most difficult to match unless lost with case.

Our team has an iPhone on hand and we try to sync the device/case with the phone to try to get some sort of information we can use to attempt to contact the owner. But more often than not, we get loose AirPods.

If someone comes in and says lost their AirPods, what do you do?

Our team will identify some AirPods based on location and date of loss and will try to get them to sync up to the owner’s phone. If there’s a match, great. If there isn’t, then I’m sorry we have not found yours as of yet.

How do you figure out who owns an item?

When we open a suitcase, we look for the owner’s information, so we can contact them. If we can’t find the owner’s information, we have to search enough to find at least two distinguishable items. So, the person coming in or calling in would have to describe a couple of things in the suitcase.

We request some sort of identification like a driver’s license or official ID. You can send it to us digitally. You can take a picture of your passport with your smartphone and send it by email.

Normally we make sure the description is accurate, and that there’s an identifiable item.

If it’s an electronic device, we’ll ask for serial number or password, and we’ll log in with them. If there’s a specific background image on their device, or a company name, that helps.

What are most bizarre items that travelers have left behind?

There were a pair of human eyes. I guess they were rushing it through and somehow it got left behind. I think they were being transported for a surgical procedure, I’m assuming, like a transplant

This year, we received grillz — gold teeth — left at a TSA checkpoint. A traveler had removed them at security.

One year, I had a huge suitcase. When I opened it up, it had a bunch of slides and a copious notes, so I had to go through it. It turned out to be the bag of a behavioral scientist for the FBI, and they had a couple of cases in there. I had to leaf through it quickly to get the information out of there.

He was doing a lecture or a professor teaching other behavioral scientists on the methodology of capturing serial killers. That was pretty fascinating.