Found and lost on fairground property

Keys, wallets, clothing, glasses commonly turn up missing

Quick! Before you continue reading this article, check and make sure that you have your wallet.

Check? How about your glasses? Car keys? Child?

Those are just some of the items that commonly tend to go missing during the Grant County Fair.

"I just had prescription glasses brought in," Sherry Murray, front desk clerk at the Grant County Fairgrounds office, said Thursday afternoon.

Other items lost include walkie-talkies and baby blankets.

"I had a lady with a baby that wouldn't go to sleep, wouldn't take a nap and was upset all day because she didn't have her blankie; you know how they get attached to those type of things," Murray said. "Clothing, jackets, a couple of wallets, cell phone or camera holders — basically keys. Lots and lots of keys."

Murray said she'd already had two sets of keys picked up, but none of the four pair of glasses had been recovered yet. And she still has things from last year that she's holding on to.

"We try to put the information — what day it was lost, where someone found it and most people are kind enough to bring it to the office here or to the Message Center," she said.

Murray said some of the building and livestock superintendents may also be holding things that they find.

Al Holman, fair and facilities manager for the fairgrounds, said wallets, keys and "baby binkies" are fairly common, before getting into some of the items he considers to be a wee bit odder.

"Condom, in the wrapper, unused — otherwise it would be garbage," Holman listed. "Reading glasses — I've worn glasses my whole life, I don't go anywhere without my glasses, so I've always found that a tad bit interesting. Crocheted items are another one; you find little things like that."

Holman said very few things are ever actually claimed. Eventually it gets turned over to the sheriff's office, who disposes of it like they would any other item, he said.

"We've had cell phones, glasses — God, you just about name it," said Capt. Pete McMahon of the Grant County Sheriff's Department. "Coats, backpacks; it's just a multitude of things. Wallets, cash."

McMahon said that the department has very little lost items left by the end of the fair.

"People have gotten to the point now that they either check with the main office or they check the sheriff's office," he said. "People are really good, basically really honest, about turning stuff in."

Some of the lost items that are of value are entered into evidence and found property, McMahon said. Other items are not even worth keeping and dumped.

If there's a phone or something with contact information, every effort is made to get hold of the owner, Murray and McMahon said.

McMahon couldn't think of anything particularly unusual to turn up missing, he said.

"Most of the things that are lost are personal items and children," he said.

Wait … children?

"Oh my God, yeah," he said. "They're all excited about being out here, and Mom turns her back on them for half a second and off they go. We usually have, on day shift, (around) six a season."

When that happens, the parents contact the sheriff's office, where officers fan out with a description to find the child.

"Usually they're small enough that they don't know they're lost," he said. "They're just wandering around, taking it all in, and we have to spread out and go find them."

But there's a happy ending to this tale of woe and loss: McMahon said in his ten years of experience working the fair, every child has been reunited with his or her parents.