Lost and Found

New York's Grand Central Terminal is the largest facility of its kind in the world. A train arrives at or departs from Grand Central every two minutes; every day half a million people pass through it. Once in a while one of them inadvertently leaves a little something behind. If some unscrupulous person doesn't make off with it first, that little something is carried down to a small room tucked away in a remote corner of the terminal's lower level.

In all, 15,000 items end up in Grand Central's Lost and Found every year. Last year 56 percent of them were recovered by their original owners. "Our goal is sixty percent,"says Steve Hutcher, the manager of the Lost and Found. "The low-value items—keys, one glove, a hat, stuff that no one comes looking for—are what drives our numbers down. When I got here, two years ago, we had three whole ...