Despite being just one of thousands, your jacket is unique; it has been through the experiences that make it yours.

Now imagine it is gone. You left it somewhere, but luckily, you have an idea where. Do you go back and search for it? Do you go about your business and buy a new jacket as if nothing happened? 

Odds are, by the time you realize it is missing and return to the spot you left it, it has been turned over to the local lost and found. There it will join coats, jackets, water bottles and other forgotten items.

Every week, countless items, not just jackets, are lost at Goshen College. Whether it be a small, easily forgotten trinket that you left on the library counter or a piece of jewelry left in the bathroom after a workout, they all end up in the various lost and found boxes around campus. 

Two examples of GC’s lost and found boxes are the transparent blue tote under the front desk in the Harold and Wilma Good Library and the large, black wooden box in the room behind the front desk at the Roman Gingerich Recreation-Fitness Center. Both are nearly completely full. 

“Right now our lost and found box is almost overflowing,” said Perri Mast-Hochstedler, a senior psychology major and Good Library front desk staff member. Mast-Hochstedler said that in one week, they will find one or two items that will have a new home in the library’s lost and found, despite not working more than a dozen hours per week. Despite the influx of items, according to Mast-Hochstetler, items are rarely retrieved from the lost and found.

Chad Coleman, the associate athletic director at GC, is also very familiar with the lost and found problem. “I worked on Campus Safety for about eight years,” said Coleman. He describes the various lost and found boxes as “where things go to die.” 

He has paid attention to the lost and found box in the RFC, and noticed that, much like the library, there are mostly jackets, coats and water bottles. Nearly everything that ends up in the RFC’s lost and found boxes stays there until Coleman gives it away or donates it to Goodwill or other charities. “We had a probably $60 Yeti cup in the lost and found,” Coleman said. “It was in plain sight too. It sat there the entire academic year,” he said.

Most of the time, items left behind are things that are easy to forget. An old hoodie that you forgot after an intense workout, a ring you put on the counter to wash your hands that you never picked up again or just another one of your many water bottles. But every so often, something truly bizarre is left behind. 

“Someone left their walking cast,” said Mast-Hochstedler. “There was one time it looked like someone left their wedding ring. It had an official maker’s mark on the inside and everything,” they said.

Surprisingly, prescription glasses are common in both the library and the RFC’s lost and found boxes. “We pick up at least a dozen of those every semester,” Coleman said.

The lost and found boxes in the library and in the RFC are two of many boxes around campus. There are boxes in just about every building, and odds are they are full to the brim of people’s forgotten favorites. 

Lost and found workers have seen people lose just about everything over the years. From the aforementioned jackets and water bottles to earbuds, phones, laptops and even textbooks — it’s best you just ask them if they have it.