TSA agents reported the stolen wallet and found its owner, the agency said.
Newark airport (File photo) NEWARK -- Along with performing safety checks, Newark airport TSA agents are also reuniting travelers with their lost items - which paid off for a New York man who left behind a wallet with $5,000 in it.
A wallet containing no ID, several credit cards, and $5,000 in cash was turned in to the TSA lost and found office at Newark Liberty International Airport after the man left it behind at a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint on Dec. 11, the TSA said in a release this week.
Using the credit cards in the wallet, agents were able to track down the wallet's owner, a Yates County, N.Y. man.
He was catching a connecting flight in Denver on his way to the west coast when he got a call from TSA officials about the missing wallet, the agency said. The man had not even realized the wallet was gone, it said.
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"I figured he was going to have a heart attack when he reached for his wallet and it wasn't there. I knew I had to act fast," said TSA Customer Service Manager Ofelia Ruiz, who oversees the Lost and Found Office in Newark.
"He probably took his ID out of his wallet when he came to the checkpoint and didn't slip it back into his wallet."
To verify that he was the owner, the man described to Ruiz what the wallet looked like and had in it, and sent a photo of himself to the TSA, which was compared with security camera footage of when he went through the checkpoint, the TSA said.
TSA officials praised the employees involved in the wallet return, noting that items are left at airport security checkpoints everyday that the agency attempts to return.
"The return of a wallet with such a large amount of cash goes to the integrity of our TSA officers," said TSA's New Jersey Federal Security Director Tom Carter.
"We were all quite pleased that we were able to identify the rightful owner so quickly and make arrangements to get his cash and credit cards back to him."
According to an NJ Advance Media report last year, about 90 percent of items lost at the airport go unclaimed.
Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
