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QuickTake:
Bill Clum, Lane Transit District customer service supervisor, says that the odder items lost on on LTD’s buses include a prosthetic leg and a $3,500 collectable card set.
A deck of credit cards. Dentures. A prosthetic leg. And of course, phones. Bill Clum sees it all. Anything that’s left on a Lane Transit District bus eventually finds its way into his domain — the lost and found.
Editor’s note: People are the heart of Lane County — which is why, each week, Lookout Eugene-Springfield will profile someone who is working behind the scenes to make our community better. If you have suggestions on others we should profile, send us an email.
Name: Bill Clum
Age: 53
Occupation: Lane Transit District customer service supervisor
Years in role: Four
Clum has worked for LTD for the past decade. He started out as a bus operator, moved up the ladder to bus operator supervisor, then bus operator trainer, before finally settling into his position as LTD’s customer service supervisor. As part of his duties, he now manages the Eugene station’s lost and found.
The items he receives undergo a thorough inspection. The cash inside wallets is counted. Backpacks are checked for contraband. Phones are searched for an emergency contact number to help find the owner.
Clum’s team then makes a good-faith estimate of the item’s value. Cheaper items go into an open rack; more expensive items go into a large safe with a thick metal casing and a sturdy lock, more fit for a bank than a bus station.
Regardless of value, Clum takes every item seriously.
“I know how important stuff is to people, even if it’s low-value,” Clum said. “So if we can get it back to the proper owner, I’m very happy.”
The most common finds are wallets, phones, bus cards and keys. LTD used to have a staffer who would melt keys into raw metal. These days, Clum hangs onto them. The current collection of keys weighs roughly 5 pounds and lives in a gallon-sized zip-close bag.
The craziest find? Clum says it’s hard to pick.
Clum tried to track down the owner of a high-end set of cards from the game “Magic: The Gathering” that was estimated to be worth $3,500. There was the prosthetic leg left on a bus. And dentures are misplaced more than people would think. Clum will see one set every couple of months; sometimes it’s only the top or bottom bridge.
Ordinarily, you’d think missing a set of teeth or a leg would be inconvenient enough to cause the owner to reach back out to LTD. Yet these items never made it back to the right hands (or mouths). More often than not, items in LTD’s lost and found stay lost.
That’s not to say Clum’s team hasn’t tried. For the “Magic: The Gathering” card set, Clum called all the card shops in the area asking if anyone was missing a card set. Clum held onto the prosthetic leg for months, waiting for someone to retrieve it.
Despite his best sleuthing efforts, every week Clum sorts through the unclaimed items and places them into a 300-gallon bin. Then, either St. Vincent de Paul or the Lions Club pick up the items. He estimates that in a given year, LTD donates about 50 of these bins, often filled to the brim.
Clum said if there’s anything he wants the public to know, it’s to check the lost and found. As much as he loves St. Vincent de Paul — especially because Clum worked there for 17 years — he’d rather see items returned to their rightful owner.
“I think a lot of people walk away from something and just say, ‘Oh, it’s lost’ and walk away,” Clum said. “If you’ve been on a bus and you’re missing something, check with us. We get so much stuff turned in.”
