There is only so much we can do to search for a lost item.
Its not rare for travellers to insist and persist to find something they lost. Lets try to look a bit deeper into what happens with lost & found items on airport premises:
1. Not all found items are stored in the police lost & found desk. This happens for obvious reasons. The amount of space taken up by lost items can be overwhelming - especially at peak travel periods - and only items of value are stored. This means that items of small value (like a t-shirt or a toy) might not be held for safekeeping.
2. Lost items will be stored for a specific amount of time, which varies and depends on the airport operations and the airline guidelines. The usual amount of time an item is stored is one month and anything lost on a larger time frame will be hard to recover.
3. Items lost are ofter very similar and identifying a lost item can be very tricky. If the police requests additional information about the item in search such as colour, passcode, serial number or anything that can help with its verification, its very important we provide it. This way the item can be verified - or identified - among many other similar items. If we neglect to provide this information, the police can't risk sending us the wrong item (or someone else's item) and will report back to us as item not identified or "item not found"
4. Sometimes we think we misplaced something but the reality is that maybe it was stolen. We can search the world and still never find it.
Time is of the essence when searching for a lost item. The sooner we initiate a search the better our chances of finding it.
The quality of information provided is also critical. There is a reason we ask you the (estimated) time you lost your item. The more information you can provide the higher the probability of recovering your "lost" item - and turning it into a "found".