Passport Found
Submitted by Shaynee GordyA few years ago at Desert Trip, one of my staff members brought in a small pile of papers and a Chinese passport to the office. He said that a security guard found it on the ground by a trash can and looked like it was important. I started going through the papers and it was a flight stub from Hong Kong to LAX with a woman's passport. On the last day of the festival, one of my staff members and I spent the better part of the afternoon online trying to find this woman. It was difficult because most of her documents were in Chinese. I called a friend of mine that reads Chinese and we were able to get her first name in English and then eventually found her Facebook profile. I sent her a private message on Facebook and hoped for the best. I was bummed by the end of the show because I had not heard back from her. I also had contacted lost and found to let them know that if she showed up I had her documents. On the Monday after the show, I received a random phone call early in the morning and it was the owner of the found passport calling from Desert Hot Springs. She was about to go to the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles when she saw my message. I gave her my address in La Quinta and she came by and picked up her passport. She burst into tears and kept hugging me; she said she would have lost her job if she had been stuck in California. She was so grateful for my kindness. I felt bad that she had lost such an important document and was so glad to get it back to her. She also told me that the trip was a surprise for her from her fiancé who had proposed to her during the visit! It turns out her backpack was on the back of her chair and someone unzipped it and stole all of her stuff. It was simply random luck that her passport ended up backstage near a trashcan! Along with the help of some good friends, we were able to get her documents back to her so she could get home to Hong Kong.