More work - Last time I turned in a lost wallet to the police they questioned me for about 5 minutes on why I was turning it in rather than just contacting the guy and giving it to him. If I contact the guy I can tell him to come get it from me rather than me having to go to the police station. So it is more work for me to get to the police station than it is to just have him come get it. Further, it would take at least a half hour out of my work day to get to the police station, turn it over, and get back to work. The non-emergency police contacts aren’t available after or before work hours. So while trying to find him is a bit more time overall, that time is during non-work hours and once I do contact him I don’t have to travel across town to deal with it. Not that this town is bigger than a postage stamp.
The guy’s name does appear to be unique. I found no hits that weren’t pointing to the same guy. The pictures on the hits I found were all of the same person and they match the passport photo. The info I could glean from the search aligns with the information in his passport (where he has traveled to and age). I did try to find a phone number but could not. It would seem phone number listings are pretty much a thing of the past.
I was able to find out his email address last night and we’ve exchanged emails. The middle name on the passport is unique, so I’ll ask him his middle name and birth date before giving him the passport.
Funny story: A local bar needed a fill in bouncer for the night. The owner knew someone that could do it who just happened to be into astrology. At the end of the night the bouncer handed the owner a stack of fake ids. The owner was astounded because previous bouncers never confiscated nearly that many fake ids. The owner asked the bouncer how he knew all those were fake. The bouncer said it was easy. He simply asked the people with the id their sign. If they didn’t know it or got it wrong, he figured they were using a fake id.
If the person I was in contact with is really the owner of the passport, he lost it after putting it on top of his car after leaving the DMV, which is just down the road from where I found the passport. It was in a relatively busy intersection on a wet day, so the beat up look of the passport could have come from hours of being in the rain and getting run over dozens if not hundreds of times.
I was on my bike riding home when I saw it. I almost missed it. As I rode past it I thought it looked like a little notebook someone might have dropped. I almost didn’t bother stopping to pick it up because I figured it wasn’t all that important and it was in a busy intersection and it was dark and I worried someone might hit me. But the quick glimpse of it I had as I went by made me think it might be a passport since the cover had that sheen to it that passports have. So I did go back to it on the off chance it was important and, if for no other reason, get it out of the street.
The name on the email the guy contacted me with is the same name as in the passport. The name on the email included his middle name, which is the same as is in the passport. If this is the wrong person, there are two people in this rather small town with an unusual first, middle and last name.
My understanding is that they would forward it to the passport office/state department/etc instead of you having to get an envelope, stamp, look up the address and mail it yourself.
When I found a lost passport years ago, I called the person listed as the emergency contact on the passport, who put me in touch with the passport holder, and I mailed it to her. Is there no longer an emergency contact listed in passports?
Do the majority of people really know their astrological sign?
My contrasting story: I found a pocketbook in the street near the beach in a touristy town. I was just passing through, several hours’ drive away from my home. The blank checks in it showed an address halfway across the country, and a phone number. I took one of the blank checks. Then I asked around and found out where the police station was and took it there. The conversation went like this:
Cheerful desk clerk: May I help you?
Me: Do you have a lost-and-found department here?
Clerk: What do you have there?
Me: I found this pocketbook in the street by the beach.
Clerk: (Looks at pocketbook). We’ll get it back to her!
Fast-forward several hours: Back at home, I called the number on the blank check. Someone answered. I explained. They said she was visiting there and the police had already called to find out where she was, and she got her pocketbook back.
I should hope that police departments everywhere, when they aren’t busy shooting unarmed innocent people, would at least have enough public-service-attitude to do that.
That was 15 years ago. I wonder if that still works these days.
I was taught that trick when when I got my bartender’s license. It was part of learning to spot a fake ID. But it only works on the spot. Someone using a friend’s ID is hopefully smart enough to memorize some of the basic info on it, but they usually don’t think far enough out to be able to answer questions like ‘what sign are you?’ or 'what’s your address?..isn’t that over by Grand St [it’s not, but they’ll agree]?" But if you ask them on the internet, they’ll just look it up, so it doesn’t matter.
If you’re that concerned, just ask them to bring a photo ID and check it for yourself or even have them send you a picture of a photo ID and mail it to that address.
I also wouldn’t worry about it being weathered. It’s a document that may have traveled the world for a number of years and now has been laying in a wet road road for a day.
As for the local PD. My local PD puts postings on facebook regarding items (keys, purses, wallets etc) that they’ve found. I’m sure they would take it. I’m not sure they would come pick it up, but you’ve put more effort into this than driving it over there at this point.
Passports are taken seriously by the government, and by extension, the police. Phone the police departgment’s non-emergency number, ask what to do with it. Or phone the office of your county clerk at the court house. They process applications for new passports, and are fully familiar with all regulations relating thereto.
The worry about positively identifying the passport owner seems like overkill, or like we’ve forgotten what the threat model is.
It’s one thing if you find something valuable in a public place and have to make a public statement that everyone can hear and there isn’t a picture of the owner inside it.
But a passport is already photo id. You don’t need another photo id to verify that the guy who comes to pick it up, who you already found by name and reached out to individually, is the person whose passport it is. Just look at the picture! Is it them?
That’s a good point. The OP likely already showed the other person his hand, but he probably could have just emailed him and said “Hi, I found your passport on Main St a few days ago. the initials are MJS. If you can verify the actual name and DOB, I’ll be happy to let you know where I work if you want to swing by and grab it”
I think some kind of verification is in order since the OP, while he probably did do his due diligence, is still communicating with a random email address he found on the internet since he doesn’t use facebook. IMO, it wouldn’t be out of line to have the guy email a picture of a DL so the OP could snail mail the passport back to that address. It eliminates the, albeit small, possibility that he’s talking to the wrong person.
Also, regarding the OP dropping off a wallet at the PD and getting grilled for 5 minutes about it. In situations like that, just tell them you want to be anonymous and take off. That is, just hand it to them, tell them you found it and where/when you found it and leave it at that. If they ask you any questions just say ‘sorry, I just found it, I really don’t want my name involved in it’.
I’ve done that plenty of times when filing police reports in order to avoid any kind of retaliation, not that you’d see it here, they’ve always obliged. There are certain circumstances where staying anonymous makes their job a big more difficult (like calling about an annoying neighbor), but if all you do is drop off a wallet, they’ll sit on it for a while, maybe try to get in contact with the person and, if I had to guess, after some length of time donate (or absorb) the cash and destroy everything else.
@susan, I don’t know if you have a public facing job, but people are real jerkfaces sometimes. At least 10 or 15 times a year one of my cashiers gets outright accused of stealing something from a customer (credit card, wallet, cash etc), ringing up all their groceries and then ‘keeping some for themselves’, declining their credit card, whatever. I have to explaining that we don’t make the decision about which CC’s get declined, but regarding the accusations of stealing, I’ll pull up camera footage and walk them through what happened and, literally, 100% of the time, it’s them. It’s always them and I never, not once, gotten an ‘oh my god, I feel so stupid for saying that, I can’t believe I thought she took it’. it’s always ‘why would I put my credit card in the bag’ or ‘why would have put all my stuff in the trunk and one orange in the back seat’…I don’t effin know. Some of these people I’ve had to say ‘look, you had your cash/cc/oranges, when you walked out the door, I don’t know what happened after that, you’re going to have to file a police report if you really think someone here stole it’.
Anyway, that’s all to say, people are asses. In the best bad case scenario, the OP returns it and gets an earful for doing something wrong. Taking too long, stealing it, stealing the persons identity if something happens three years from now… OTOH, A bad case scenario is that the OP gives it to the wrong person, and opportunistic bad guy that just happened to get the email.
Probably not going to happen, but it’s the type of thing that makes you say 'well, if I just throw it out, I can stay uninvolved. Same reasoning behind dropping it off at the local PD and letting them deal with it.
Or, just mail it to the address mentioned upthread and be done with it, you’re clearly concerned about the whole ordeal.
I totally agree. What’s so difficult about turning it in? If the shoe was on the other foot and it was you who lost your passport, you would be hoping that somebody would take 10 minutes out of their day and turn it in rather then trashing it.
Page 5 of my passport under " Important Information Regarding Your Passport".
“Loss or Theft”
“The loss, theft or destruction of a passport should be reported immediately to local police authorities and to Passport Services CLASP unit , Washington, DC 20522-1705”
If you should report it lost in this manner, then you can report it found the same way.
What do you think the typical big-city police precinct desk officer does when someone walks in with a found item that doesn’t have a phone number prominently displayed on it?
They throw it in that box under the desk. And twice a year, that box gets put in that weird closet place in the basement.