TSA ready for influx of forgotten items after Arizona Super Bowl

PHOENIX — Sky Harbor Airport will be swarming over the next few days with football and golf fans, meaning the Transportation Safety Administration is likely to see a heap of items left behind.

Each day, TSA agents recover forgotten items at security checkpoints.

“People leave belts, they leave their glasses, sunglasses, reading glasses, laptops, they leave their cell phones, lots of keys … they leave their walkers and canes and big huge suitcases,” Edie Walton, resource specialist for lost and found with the TSA, said.

Walton said even strange items, such as teeth and a Girl Scout Cookie box filled with jewelry, have been left behind.

All the lost items end up in a storage room at Sky Harbor where they are kept for at least 30 days.

“I think a lot of (people) are in a panic,” Walton said. “They’re in a rush. They don’t even know they left them at the airport so they don’t really know, ‘Should I call there?'”

Busy days at Sky Harbor often bring a spike in the number of forgotten items, and Walton said the TSA will likely see a spike this weekend and early next week as people come and go for the Super Bowl and Phoenix Open.

“We have a thousand items a month,” she said. “Thanksgiving I think we had, that weekend, was 300 … just on the day before and the few days after.”

Walton said people who leave items at security they can contact the TSA to try and recover them.

“You can call (and) leave a message,” she said. “Please leave your name, and spell your name, so we know who you are, the date that you travelled, the airline that you travelled and a good description of your item and we will call you back.”

She added that if the TSA does not have an item, it is also a good idea to check with Sky Harbor and the airline directly in case they may have found the item.