The Case of the Lost Austrian Passport

Several of the student custodial workers rushed into my office this morning. “Look!” they shouted, holding out a dark red passport from Republik Osterreich, “Do you know this guy?” I opened it. A 29 year old male with long “fluffy” hair stared back at me – Vladimir C. – no one I knew. But how did we have his passport? How was it here on the Fountainview Academy campus? How long had we had the passport? Where had it come from?

Apparently the custodial girls had been getting ready to send our leftover lost and found items to ADRA and started looking through a black messenger bag before getting rid of it. Inside were packs of gum, shampoo, dirty socks, an empty cigarette carton – and the passport. 

I paged through the passport, no contact information. Time for some detective work! The fellow was born in Russia but his passport was Austrian. There were several visas, one for Russia and one for the USA (with a much better picture – in fact he was actually kind of cute in this one).

The USA visa had the name of a college on it and the visa dates were for the 2010-2011 school year. Maybe the school had some of his contact info. I googled the college which was in California and called about 5 or 6 numbers before I finally was able to speak to an actual person (not an automated system). “If he was a student here, and if we have his contact information, we’ll forward your message and contact details on to him,” I was told. How very helpful! 

Next I tried looking him up on Facebook, but all I found was a guy by the same name who had an unusual aversion to all clothing except for "whitey-tighty" underwear.

Meanwhile Joiya had been searching for more clues in his bag and had found a small metal “medallion” with an engraving on the back – Vlad C., August 24, 2013, Serenity Ranch, Recovery First.

I quickly googled Serenity Ranch, it’s an addiction treatment center in Alberta. Now everything started to make sense. I pieced together what I imagined had happened. Vladimir must be a patient at Serenity Ranch and had come to one of Fountainview’s Christmas concerts on our Alberta tour about 3 weeks before. His bag must have gotten mixed up with our things and accidentally brought back to Fountainview and had of course ended up in our lost and found.

Quickly I called the Ranch number and after several tries was able to speak with a somewhat abrupt woman. She seemed a little surprised at first. Yes, he was still there and would be for a while. Yes, it would be great if I could send the bag. She gave me their address and said she would let him know that I was mailing everything. There were no answers however to my unasked questions – did he know his passport was missing? Which concert he had gone to in Alberta? Had the addictions center brought patients to the concert? How had his things ended up with ours? Why was an Austrian at a Canadian addictions ranch? (not that I would ask him that of course!)

So I’m sorry Vladimir that we “stole” your passport. I hope you haven’t reported a missing passport to the Austrian government yet. I hope you recover from your addictions. I hope you have a good life. At least now you can get out of Canada and back into Austria. I don't think I ever would have found you if it hadn't been for that little medallion. I hope that it’s not a legal offense to not report finding a missing passport. I hope it’s not illegal to post these pictures from your passport on my blog. You'd probably be offended if you knew...