Happy Landings: Port Employee to Retire After Helping Lost Airport Items Find Owners

Wednesday, 03 March 2010
Contact: Dale Frost (619) 686-6461

A notebook with $10,000 stuffed inside. Two dozen ostrich eggs. A tattered baby blanket.

All of the items could be clues in a great whodunit novel. For the past 12 years, those and thousands of other finds at San Diego International Airport have been left to Michael Koffler to sleuth out who owns them – and how to return the lost goods.

Koffler mans the San Diego Harbor Police's Lost and Found office at the airport and enjoys reuniting passengers with their lost possessions. After serving 16 years as an administrative assistant with the department, Koffler is retiring on March 26, 2010.

But he will take with him many memories of the lost objects and people he helped reunite with these, at times, unusual items.

Take the case of the $10,000 found in the notebook. The money was from entry fees paid for a local event. Koffler looked through the notebook for clues of ownership, and contacted the event organizers.

"They were extremely grateful," said Koffler.

Koffler reminisced recently about the night two dozen ostrich eggs were left curbside at Terminal 2.

"The owners called inquiring about them as soon as I arrived at the office," said Koffler. He arranged for an airline to fly the eggs to San Francisco. "The airline did it as a courtesy for the passengers," said Koffler.

There are different challenges every day.

Koffler said sometimes distraught mothers come into the lost and found office, looking for a stuffed animal or tattered blanket that their toddler can't sleep without.

"I ask them where they've been and suggest they backtrack through the airport looking for the item. That usually calms them down," said Koffler. "And sometimes we have the item."

Koffler said he always strives to offer the best possible customer service. "You have to be upbeat and anticipate that people can be stressed and emotional about their missing items," he said.

Koffler works alone in the lost and found office five days a week, juggling the many phone calls inquiring about lost items, deliveries of lost objects, data entries and inventories that must be done.

The busy lost and found office, located in Terminal 2, last year handled 13,000 objects that were left at the airport curb, waiting areas and security check points.

In 2007, Koffler received a Partnership Award from the Transportation Security Administration for his work at the San Diego Harbor Police Lost and Found office.

On a recent day, a Transportation Security Administration employee brought over an iPhone that was forgotten at the security checkpoint. "We get phones, laptops, jewelry and car keys every day," said Koffler.

Larger objects that regularly are left behind include surfboards and snowboards.

He said every day is a new challenge, with different people, different lost items and different stories. "Although sometimes we never know the backstory," Koffler said.

There was the time he arrived at the office and a plain brown bag was leaning against the door. Inside the bag was a chirping green parakeet.

"There wasn't a note or anything," said Koffler, who called Project Wildlife to retrieve the bird.

Koffler first came to San Diego after retiring from the U.S. Navy in 1993. He said a highlight of his Navy career was serving as a journalist aboard the USS Midway aircraft carrier that was stationed a few miles off the coast of Vietnam during the fall of Saigon in April, 1975.

Koffler operated the ship's radio and television stations, and assisted American and foreign journalists aboard the ship to cover the story of the evacuation of Vietnamese families and U.S. personnel from the U.S Embassy. The USS Midway then transported families to the Philippines. 

The USS Midway is now a museum located at the San Diego Bay waterfront.

Koffler continued his journalism career as a radio and television broadcaster with the Far East Network in Iwakuni, Japan.

Before joining the Navy, he worked as a television co-anchor in Eugene, Oregon. "We covered all types of news, everything you can imagine," Koffler said.

Koffler was born in Bozeman, Montana, and raised in Echo, Oregon. In retirement, he plans to spend more time with his wife, Fely, daughter Jennifer and four grandchildren.

A ham radio operator, he also plans to build radios and enter day-long ham radio contests. Koffler's travel plans include going twice a year to the Philippines to finish a vacation home he is remodeling there.

And when he goes through the airport, he won't leave anything behind.

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