Big Boys Hobbies

Found a set of car keys...trying to do the right thing!

DirtyRob

DirtyRob

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Aug 27, 2010
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Northwest Indiana
Was out at my local park just clad hunting the gravel parking lots around the baseball fields. I found a set of car keys. Right of top of the grass. No signs of our recent rains. Must be a fresh drop. Anyways, any of you who's lost their car or house keys knows what a pain in the but this is. The only clue to the owner is that attached to the keys were '2' rewards mini-swipe cards. One from K-mart and the other from Dick's Sports. Both stores were on my way home. First stop was Dick's. I talked to the manager and asked if she could look up this persons inforamation from the rewards number on the card. She gave me some lame excuse about not having any way to bring up personal information. All I wanted to do was have the manager call this person and tell them their keys were dropped off at the store. No luck here. So I try K-mart with similar results. But K-mart just asked me to leave the keys with them because "people come in here all the time looking for lost keys!". I've already told her twice that I found the keys about 2 miles from here at a park. Why would they go to K-mart looking for keys when they were lost in the park? No luck again. So off I went. One last try. I decided to call the 800 number on the back of the Dick's reward card. I got a friendly voice on the other end but got the same story. She was nice and knew I was just trying to do the right thing. She ended up telling me that Dick's has an agreement with the post office. Just drop the keys into any mailbox and they'll get shipped to Dick's. Then Dick's will look up the information of the owner and then mail the keys back to the card holder's address. By now I just gave in and tossed them into the first mailbox I saw. I do hope the owner gets the keys eventually. It seems that with all of the extra hands that these keys will have to go through....there's a chance for them to get lost again.

Why do people make it so hard just to do the right thing?
 
I found a large key ring with over twenty-five keys on it once. I believe that it was probably lost by who ever mowed the grass, because some of them looked like they came from a shop. There was one of those tags from a grocery store where they tell you to drop them in a mailbox, but the tag was in bad shape and I didn't think that it would remain with the keys. I took them to one of the stores so the clerk could look up who owned them. She took them and tossed them in a large drawer. "Next!" I doubt if they were ever returned. In your case, I think that I would have just posted a notice on a pole near where you found them, and asked them to identify them. They probably use that area a lot and may have even returned to search for them.
 
My only thought on this is that to protect the privacy of customers, the stores don't allow the average store employee access to the personal info from those tags. There would too much risk of someone selling the info for identity theft purposes. So, they limit access to a few people at HQ.
 
Yeah its for safety. Same is true with cellphones. If you find one and go to a store they cannot give you any information.
 
I understand the need for privacy, That's why I went to see the store's manager. That's why I called the 800 number. I thought at that level they could do something or know the person who could get the ball rolling. I just tried to cut out all of the middle men and some of the red tape. If it was me that had lost the keys, I would be freaking happy with that phone call from the store that siad some guy found them and they're sitting at the store waiting to be picked up. I call THAT custormer service.
 
Your intentions were very honorable. However, the privacy of the individuals is even more important. You 'could' have been a stalker, abuser etc trying to get information on someone. So many negative possibilities. I do sympathize with your frustration though. RickO
 
I would turn them over to the parks department in that situation. If I knew I lost my keys at the park I would call them to see if anyone turned them in.
 
The park is pretty much officially closed for the season. The park is open but with no staff. I did check that first. I'm heading there right now to go break the $100 mark in less than 2 months of detecting. Gotta get some clad for my sniper coil! Before you know it, it'll be snowing and all I'll have to hunt will be the snowpiles from the plows in the big parking lots. I love the bars/clubs. Drunk people seem to lose alot of jewelry.
 
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