What successes or fails have you had recovering luggage, tools, or vehicles?

This article

https://www.usatoday.com/story/trav...cker-issues-airtag-suitcase/71753740007/

reports limitations such as

quote

That was the lesson learned last year when a Florida airport worker was arrested and charged with two counts of grand theft. Sheriff's deputies found stolen luggage in his home and he admitted to removing an AirTag from the luggage, which authorities never recovered.

Stripping an AirTag from luggage is almost too easy. An AirTag that isn't with its owner for a period of time makes a sound when you move it.
You can also go to "Find My" to see if there's an unknown AirTag nearby.
Smart luggage thieves know they have to get rid of the trackers – unless they want police to show up at the front door.
...snip...
Use a redundant tracking system.
If you first buy an AirTag or Tile,
consider a redundant system,
like the Ekster tracker, a solar-powered tracking card.

The bad guys will not know what it is, allowing you to recover your lost luggage if it's stolen.
For a higher level of security, consider upgrading to a GPS tracker like
Pebblebee.com
or
Gego.io

end quote

In the late 1960's, our '65 Coronet was stolen in Brooklyn and repainted into a 'gypsy cab' (semi-legal in NYC at that time). My father later spotted it parked on the street (the thieves painted right over the dents and dings) and the police impounded the car. The police would not release the car to my parents claiming they couldn't verify the VIN. The real reason, in my opinion, was that when the car ultimately got auctioned off the money would go to the police pension fund. My mom was an employee of the NYPD and she called the Auto Squad commander. She told him that if the car wasn't returned to us, she would inform the media (newspapers and TV....) that the police knew of the hot car ring and had identified a particular body shop that was doing the paint jobs. About 15 minutes later, the commander called my mother and told her he had good news...Chrysler had magically verified the VIN and we could pick the car up from the pound that afternoon.

I worked for a home builder (Richmond American) in the early 2000. When theft of air conditioning and stoves got out of control they put LoJac style locators in units after they where installed. The big surprise came when they found out that the original installers where the ones stealing the items to resale.

Writer brought back a wait oil change ticket that I thought I would knock out real quick as my team was pretty busy at the time. I pulled the car in and was thinking "I remember this car". Another team had put an engine in it very recently with most of the work done by a trainee. When I raised the hood, I noticed the cowl was full of tools. I called the other team leader over and asked if he was missing any tools. He said yes and I can't figure out who is taking them. I started laughing and pointed to the cowl. He had some very choice words for the trainee.

Not really a theft story but is a funny recovery story.


Tim

Lost and found story: I once lost a 12 inch Crescent brand wrench wile working on a snow cat that the owner used to groom around 80 miles of snowmobile trails. I was disappointed to lose it, as it was a hand me down from a great uncle and was in perfect condition for a 40 year old tool. I figured that I would never see it again.
The next summer a friend of mine tells me how he was out driving to a remote lake along one of the trails. He was about 12 miles from the staging area, when the rear end on his truck broke. He got out of the truck to investigate and when he bent down he sees a wrench lying in the dirt. He tells me how he was bummed about the truck, but that he found a nice 12 inch crescent wrench! I told him about the wrench I left on the snow cat and I describe how it had some white paint on it. He says that this wrench had white paint on it, and gave it back to me.
This was about 16 years ago. I still have the wrench and I use it almost every day. I guess I was meant to have that wrench!

Awesome!

Interesting stories.

I am tempted to ask:
How long have one of your tools been “lost” inside the house or garage.
I recently found a tool that had been missing for 6 years - and if it had been a snake it would have bitten me several times a day.

Hmmm...a key lost in the snow off my back porch, which a week later was just visible as it reflected sunlight.
A nice flashlight I'd been looking for, and almost a year later found under some towels in the guest bathroom.
A Rickenbacker 4001 I'd had to check in on a flight, but it took the airline 1.5 hours to find and return to me at a different luggage retrieval spot.

But the best wasn't so much a lost item, as the kind of story I refer to even to this day when fatigued/bonehead confusion stories are told:
We were building a guy's Southwest Tour car - kind of a tube-framed TransAm car - in a mad thrash to make a race in a couple days.
Working straight through for at least 3 days, an occasional 1-hour rotating nap schedule, so an intense thrash by 3 of us with occasional help.
Stuff is spread out among 1,000 SF, different tasks of course being attacked simultaneously.
We're down to final stuff with a day left, it's the wee hours, we're nearly zombies.
Car owner's looking for the Whitney Punch hand tool, tearing around, swearing as an ex-Marine can, "where's the GD/F'n/etc whitney punch", over & over.
We finally drop everything to frantically help look to calm him down.
It's been in his hand the whole time.
We sent him to the sofa for a nap.

Damned Gremlins!

A wedding band (ring) at Munich Airport on a return business trip from Austria. The whole way back I'm convinced I'll never find it and my wife will never believe the story. I went through Customs and as I learned I took off EVERY piece of metal I had including belt, watch, wedding band (slide over watch and close metal band) shoes, cell phone, etc.,) put the loose things into briefcase, go through metal detector. Customs agent spots something in briefcase and asks to open it. Apparently because I could not see what they were looking at they opened the watch bracelet and the wedding band fell off, didn't see that. Everything is okay so I gather everything up and walk over to the seating area and sit there for a while. Get the boarding announcement and start to put everything back on and panic when I see the wedding band is missing. Nothing in the briefcase so I RUN back to Customs and sure enough the staff had changed shifts. I asked if a wedding band was found and they looked around quickly and nothing was found. They tell me to go to lost and found but boarding had already begun and this is an International flight to the US so I can't head there on the other side of the airport. I get home (a Saturday) and wait until Monday to call Munich Airport lost and found and surprise they FOUND IT!. But now they want proof that it's my wedding band before we/they can figure out how we get it back? Then I remember that I did a photo on how our minibike hand controls were too large and the clutch and brake lever handles were too far away for a child's small hands as they were spin-offs of adult controls. I knew I had a photo of my left hand next to my five year old son's hand with the ring on my hand and emailed it to them. Fortunately, another employee was heading back at the end of the week, got a power of attorney or something like that and he stopped at Lost and Found, picked it up and brought it back. Never, ever thought I would see that wedding band again. The lucky part of that was the explanation I told my wife, that rolled her eyes when I told her now became the truth, well worth more than the cost of a wedding band if she would even have wanted to get one .