Two buses, one lost purse, and a lot of hope in humanity
Customer’s social media post recounts her lost-and-found experience highlighting RTD employee
Somewhere between two buses on her evening commute home, Jennifer Sullivan Corkern lost her purse. Corkern, who recounted the incident in a post on Facebook, was convinced her purse had been stolen.
With a sense of futility, Corkern filled out RTD’s online lost and found form and, as she said, “sent it into the void,” believing the effort would be pointless. Much to her surprise, the void responded.
In the form of a human voice, Corkern received a simple reply that gave her a small glimmer of hope.
“Yes, your item was turned in.”
Certain the purse would be empty, Corkern made her way to RTD’s Lost and Found office at Civic Center Station. On her way there, she began mentally calculating the total cost to replace the purse’s contents. From her wallet and sunglasses to a watch and AirPods, Corkern said she pictured her nice, newish purse turned inside out, slouched alone on a dusty shelf in some back office.
Instead, she was handed her purse, with all its contents fully intact. Every item was there. Nothing was missing.
“Friends, good news for humanity lines the shelves of the RTD property room,” Corkern wrote in her Facebook post that has since garnered more than 200 likes and dozens of comments. “The place is packed with turned-in purses, backpacks, boxes, bags, looking as full as my purse. Honest, decent people roam our streets.”
Corkern said that there is even better news for humanity, and that is because of Tonia White, an RTD employee tasked with reconnecting lost items with bus and rail customers.
“[Tonia] runs the property room,” Corkern wrote. “It’s her job to catalog and care for the countless items people lose while moving through the city. Some get claimed. Many don’t. And most days, I imagine, she processes it all quietly—never knowing if her work brings closure or just one more shrug from a customer who’s given up hope. [Customers] probably write them off, like I almost did.”
It turns out Corkern’s purse wasn’t the only thing she recovered that day.
“I left RTD’s property room feeling a little more certain that we’re going to be okay. There are still honest people walking the streets. And there are still people like Tonia—dusting off the things the rest of us might forget, holding onto humanity one item at a time.”
In 2024, more than 14,000 lost and found items were turned into RTD, including bikes, wallets, laptops, cell phones, hats, prescription medications, and coats. Tonia and her colleagues carefully catalog each and every item and, when identification information is available, work to track down an owner.
To learn more or report a lost item, visit www.rtd-denver.com/how-to-ride/lost-and-found.