"People are always losing things," Rick Jenkins, a lost and found attendant at Grand Central, told ABC's Localish. "You nod off on the train and you wake up and it's your stop and you jump up and you left your jacket behind or your wallet behind. It happens all year long every day."
The Lost and Found at Grand Central takes in around 25,000 items a year and returns around 9,000 to 10,000 of those things back to their owners. Five determined employees sift through the daily avalanche of human detritus.
The forgotten items include coats, jewelry, smartphones and Apple AirPods.
So. Many. AirPods.
But then, every so often, there are bizarre, even unsettling discoveries - like urns with ashes. Somebody managed to leave behind a prosthetic leg.
Also passing through the Lost and Found? A wide display of human emotions.
"We have people cry at the window, we have people scream at us and punch the glass," Jenkins said. "Someone loses their wallet it's the end of the world or they have their whole life on their phone, and you get that back to them it's a big deal."
Executive producer: Rolando Pujol