Returning from a trip to Florida, Aaron and Iris Rosenberg, their four children and a babysitter piled her assorted luggage and themselves into two cabs to go home to Deerfield.
The children, age 5 to 13, “were so excited to get home, to get back in the house and see the dogs,” recalled Iris.
In the happy bedlam that ensued, the Rosenberg’s 9-year-old daughter left her backpack in the cab.
Not a great mishap, perhaps, but a time-consuming one that required several phone calls to track the backpack down, as well as a trip to and from the office of American Taxi Dispatch Inc. in Mt. Prospect to retrieve the backpack when it was located four days later.
“It didn’t have anything of value in it. It was more sentimental. It had my daughter’s pencils and drawings and some little gifts for her friends,” said Iris, who praised the company’s effort to find the backpack.
Retrieving items that customers leave behind is a headache for cab companies, whether they operate in the suburbs or Chicago, representatives of several companies agreed.
Nonetheless, the companies said they see it as a duty to maintain lost-and-found departments and to diligently try to reunite customers with their belongings.
Though the cabs that ferried the Rosenbergs home did not have them at the time, American Taxi Dispatch, which dispatches 580 cabs in DuPage, Cook and Kane Counties, is installing devices with a recorded message that reminds passengers, as well as drivers, to check that no personal belongings are left behind.
Returning lost belongings, said Dan Coyne, a manager at American Taxi, “is a bureaucratic nightmare. And when someone’s going to the airport and leaves their passport in the back seat–do you know how tense that can be?”
Another even more dramatic incident at a different cab company last year was the impetus behind American Taxi installing the recording devices, Coyne said.
In October, a Highland Park family left their 3-year-old asleep in the back seat as the cab drove away. Though the driver was ticketed for failing to check his back seat, the ticket was dropped.
Connie Buscemi, a spokeswoman for Chicago’s Consumer Services Department, said “drivers are supposed to look in the rear compartment after every fare to see whether somebody has left something behind.”
The cab companies encourage their drivers to do so, said Jan Johns, corporate vice president for Yellow Cab Management in Chicago.
“Most are good about it, but sometimes it’s dark and a cellphone [for instance] is dark. It’s hard to see,” she said.
Even if the city requires cabbies to check their back seats, there is no one other than the passenger monitoring to see that they do it. And companies in the suburbs operate from various communities and are not overseen by a single governmental entity.
Whether a driver is required to look in the back seat or not, it seems apparent that it is in passengers’ best interests to make sure they are exiting a cab with everything that they brought into it.
Many do not. Ask Pam Murtaza, a veteran of tracking lost-and-found items, and others employed at cab companies. Murtaza is a supervisor who has worked for 20 years at Blue Ribbon Taxi Co. in Chicago.
Sitting in an office filled with three suitcases, a mountain of cellphones and an array of umbrellas, hats and mittens, Murtaza said recently: “No one looks to see what they’re leaving behind in a cab. It’s a chronic problem. I’ve had a woman forget her wedding dress [in a cab] on the way to her wedding,” she said.
Murtaza’s company provides 50,000 rides a year. She estimated she gets up to 60 calls a day from people who have lost or think they have misplaced an item in one of their cabs.
Until they recently installed the recording devices in half their cabs, Coyne said his company got up to 300 calls a week from passengers who had lost or thought they had misplaced belongings in their cabs. In the couple of months since the recording devices were installed, he said the number of lost-and-found calls has declined by 60 percent.
Suitcases, purses, Palm Pilots, wallets, keys, passports, cellphones, pagers, portfolios, briefcases, lap-top computers, video cameras and backpacks are among the more run-of-the-mill items that people tend to drop or forget in cabs, Murtaza and Coyne agreed.
“We’ve also had a couple of [prosthetic] limbs left behind,” said Murtaza. “And a purple massage table. It was so big. How could you lose it?”
Among the items that Johns said drivers at Yellow Cab have found in cabs over the last couple of years were a wallet containing $4,000, an unlocked briefcase with $8 million in non-negotiable bonds and a kitchen sink.
The sink was left by an exhibitor heading to a trade show; the bonds were forgotten by a courier; and the wallet belonged to a soldier home on leave, she said.
Chicago requires cab companies to keep lost items for 60 days. After that, the person who found the item–the driver–can keep it. The city also operates a lost and found, but encourages drivers to return lost items to their own companies.
Murtaza said she often keeps items, particularly expensive ones, for months, hoping someone will collect them.
“I kept a bottle of Opium [expensive perfume] once for five months. If I can get it [a belonging] back to someone, I surely will try,” she said.
Of course, if there is any identification with a name and phone number or address on the item, it makes it easier for cab companies to contact owners.
The best piece of advice that Buscemi and the companies had for tracking down lost items is to take note of the number of the cab.
In Chicago, for instance, every number is unique and is posted in several places in the cab, including the license plate, both passenger doors, the dome light and the cabbie’s chauffeur license. It’s even listed in Braille.
Buscemi also advised passengers to look through their compartment before they exit the cab and after they get out–just before they shut the door.
Coyne said his company is the first in Chicago to have the recorded devices and that they are a success.
Each cost $30 to install. The 18-second message plays every time a door is opened and closed. It urges passengers to make sure they’ve left nothing behind and provides payment information.
Chicago is not considering requiring those devices, however.
“They’re novel and, to some degree, helpful,” said Buscemi. “But our research shows that most of our cab users are regular users. Hearing that repeatedly would be somewhat annoying.”
Iris Rosenberg said she would have not minded the annoyance, however. “It would have saved me an hour drive back and forth to pick up the backpack,” she said.
LOST AND FOUND BY THE NUMBER
Judging by the numbers of umbrellas and gloves stashed in their offices, the operators of lost-and-found departments at area cab companies probably never suffer days when their hairstyles are ruined by a downpour or when they have to endure cold weather by stuffing their hands in their pockets.
In Chicago, lost-and-found departments are required to keep misplaced items for 60 days. But many wayward belongings–mostly the less expensive items–are never claimed.
The people who answer the scores of phone calls a day made by customers trying to find lost items would prefer that nothing be lost.
If you do lose a phone, a hat, a laptop computer or a prosthetic limb in a taxi–as cab company representatives say has happened–there are measures to take to try to ensure you retrieve it:
– Call the cab company as soon as you notice an item is lost. If it’s just seconds, it’s possible that a driver could be radioed from the office, swing around the block and return your item.
– Know the name of the cab company and the number of the cab. The number is listed on several places on the inside and outside of the cab. In Chicago, the cab’s license plate number is also the cab number.
– Get a receipt and, if the driver has filled it in, make sure that the cab name and number correspond to the name and number on the cab, or write this information on a piece of paper.
– Be prepared to provide other relevant information, such as your name, the address where you were picked up and where you were going and a description of the lost item.
– Chicago encourages drivers to take lost belongings to their own cab company offices. But the city also operates a lost and found department where items can be turned in. That number is 312-744-9400.
– Other cab companies and their lost and found departments can be reached at these numbers:
American Taxi Dispatch Inc. in Mt. Prospect, 630-790-8294
Courtesy Cab Co. Inc. in Downers Grove, 630-968-1323
Blue Ribbon Taxi Co. in Chicago, 773-878-5400
Checker Taxi Association in Chicago, 312-243-2537
Yellow Cab Management in Chicago, 312-829-4222.
