Found Wallet -- How to Contact Owner Quickly?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have the full name and address of a complete stranger. In fact, I have his driver’s license and credit cards too, because he left his wallet on the Metro bus this morning. But there’s no phone number.

I tried to visually identify him in the crowd from his driver’s license photo, but he had a two-minute head start offloading from our emergency shuttle bus after the system had been snarled by a train derailment – there was a seething crowd of about 500 people on the platform. So that was a no-go.

What is the fastest way to reach him? It might already be too late to save him canceling his credit cards, but there’s money in the thing, and we already know his morning sucked before he lost his wallet (took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to reach the office).

I have access to so much info about him, but no way to just call him. I tried looking him up on Facebook…no luck. If I called a bank or credit union that issued one of his cards, could I leave my number and ask them to give it to him when he calls (if he hasn’t already)?

Any ideas?

2

I found a wallet once in a ditch by my house. I was able to contact the guy from his business card in his wallet. But he had reported it missing to the police already (actually stolen, hence the ditch) so I just told him I would drop it off at the station and he picked it up there.

So I say call the non emergency number of he city where you found it. Or the bus line’s number.

3

You could try a website such as WhitePages[dot]com. But that’s not at all guaranteed to work these days.

Otherwise, I would turn it over to the police. They have access to databases that the general public does not.

4

If he has work ID, call his place of employment. That may be where he was heading anyway.

5

Just a general Google search might turn it up.

Otherwise turn it either to the police or Metro.

6

Put it in a express 2 day priority mail box. They charge a flat fee for the box to ship. Address it and drop it off.

Done

7

Flyer mentioned it, but Whitepages . com is my go to place as well for getting numbers. It usually works well and even when the person doesn’t have their number listed, at the bottom is a section of “Lives with” and “Might know” people and you can try them.

As for cancelling credit cards, I wouldn’t worry about that. You could call me 15 minutes later and I’d probably have already done it. Even if you said you watched the wallet fall out of my pocket and no one else ever touched it, you just couldn’t get my attention, I still cancel them, just to be safe.

8

Last weekend, I left my wallet on the roof of my car and drove off. Two days later someone contacted me through LinkedIn. First Name last name city will usually have a LinkedIn up high in the list!
It had my drivers license in it so he dropped it by my mailbox the next day. I sent him a $20 Amazon gift card by email as thanks for his effort.

I should add that he tried Facebooking me first, but I use a pseudonym there so that didn’t work.

9

Locally, I’d take the wallet to the address. We’re not that big a city.

But in huge Metro areas it’s best to let the post man deliver it.

10

Some people have moved from the address on their driver’s license.

11

I found the contents of a wallet that had obviously been dumped out in the desert. I simply gathered them up and mailed them to the address shown. Pretty simple; I wouldn’t call anyone.

12

Take it to your local Police Department.

13

This or just drop it in a mailbox. (I got mine back that way once when I lot it. Money still intact.)

14

Turn it in to the bus/train company. He’s probably already called them looking for it.

15

I would want to make sure it got back to the rightful owner so I would not turn it over to anyone. I would go in person to the address shown. I am sure they would not mind. It could be that the person no longer lives at the address shown.

16

The one time I found someone’s wallet, it was after watching fireworks on July 4th, 2015, and I ended up just driving over to his house and giving it to him.

It was kind of sad; he was an elderly gentleman who has early-stage Alzheimers, and didn’t even know his wallet was missing yet. So I’m glad I’m the one who ran across it instead of someone less honest.

17

I wonder if there’s a way to use Uber for this? Find an Uber driver near his address and have him swing by the house to give him your contact info.

18

Hey! You found my wallet! Thanks, I’ll PM you my address.

19

Great idea. Take a little cash out of the wallet to pay for a taxi (Uber doesn’t take cash) to deliver a letter to the address saying you have his wallet and give him your ph#. I sure wouldn’t mind losing a little cash in order to get my wallet back.

20

Depending on the person’s name, you might be able to do a search on Facebook. I did that before - I found a debit card on the sidewalk. I Facebook’d the name, found a match, and messaged her.

Of course, I’m in a small town, and the person had a relatively uncommon name. Probably won’t work with “John Smith” in NYC. But you also have a picture ID, so you could possible do a photo match as well.

Similar story: I once found a GPS on a bike trail. No ID, no nothing. Just a GPS. Being the nice person that I am, I at least wanted to make an effort at finding the owner. I didn’t have much to go on, but I know around here, the beer-drinker/mountain-biker crowd has a lot of intersection.

I posted something on the local brewery’s Facebook page. Within an hour, a guy got back to me with the model # and serial # of his lost GPS. It was a match.

Bonus: turned out the guy was my eye-doctor.

Small towns!