by kshacker | 2025-07-16 19:34:31+00:00
Story of a recovered passport - no alcohol and 21 years back.

Was visiting Toronto labor day weekend 2004 with a freshly minted green card and India's passport with family (wife+2kids). Was in Eaton center, we were trying to take a train/metro to somewhere, kept my waist pouch (that I used those days) on top of the stroller's canopy to pay at the ticket counter and when I was done, of course the pouch was not there.

The realization of theft was immediate. I could not have dropped it earlier since I just took the money out. It disappeared in the last one minute. BTW, not just the pouch, even the wallet was gone as I had taken only the cash and put everything on top of the stroller's canopy. Wallet, Passports, Green Card - all gone.

Talked to the Mall security, they did not do much except write a report and make me call credit card companies to cancel the cards. Then went to police, but police said they can not do anything without an ID and asked me to get an ID (temporary or whatever from my embassy). Of course it is a Sunday and the embassy is closed. Could go back to hotel, still had access to rental car (that we decided not to use for this trip), but that was it. Tried to think through this but nope - this was so unchartered I did not know what to do. What will happen to work, how will I get passport, how will we get green card reprocessed, how will we pay the hotel (since the cards were canceled) - complete (but not visible) panic.

Thankfully my company had offices in Toronto, so found some connections and trying to talk to them on what will happen if I got stranded in Toronto like this. They started looking into this.

Also talked to my landlord back in US and ask him to be prepared to go to our apartment and pull out the green card files. Told him I will call back if I need help.

By now it is 2+ hours. We are walking back to Hotel, and I get a call (thanks cellphones) from someone saying they found my pouch with passports. It appears my checkbook was also in the pouch and that had my phone number. They are not nearby - "oh I found it on the train as I was leaving" and now you will need to come here, about 45 minutes west from there. I say sure I will be there as soon as I can. I call my company's contact and they provide me an escort since it was an unknown area to me (and them). I get the car, my wife does not want me to go alone so it is all of us, we pick up my "colleague" from his home, and land up at the place we were asked to.

Thankfully a person comes down from a tall building and hands me the bag. The bag had 300-400 when I lost it, but now it is just 20 bucks. He says that's how it was. And then he asks me for a finders fee - I give the 20 bucks to him, and move on.

Except the money, got back everything else. Phew.

[ Edit - Trying to remember the scenario more since I came back here to respond to a question. My wallet was definitely gone. How did the mall security get me to cancel the cards? As I recall, we called 2 credit card companies ... and canceled those cards based on the social, but at that point I was sure the mall security was not going to help, so I said those were all the cards I had and left from there. ]