The staff at Haifa's Bat Galim train station is used to finding lost objects and returning them to passengers, but what they found on Friday, they'll remember for a long time.
During the afternoon, an alert passenger reported a suspicious bag sitting unclaimed on the platform. Station staff, led by Shlomo Maman, isolated the bag and called security guard Ben Algom, who inspected the bag and discovered $3,000, several hundred euros, passports belonging to Latvian citizens, cellular phones, and an iPad.
Maman and Algom began searching for the bag's owners, announcing the find on the train's communication networks. They also searched on Facebook for the people whose names were written in the passports, and began chatting with them.
Apparently, the couple, Latvian tourists, were on their way to the airport via train, and did not notice that their bag of valuables was missing. When they were notified that the bag was found, they returned to the station, where they received the bag and all of its contents.
This is not the first time that the station manager, Shlomo Maman, who has been working for the railway for almost 30 years, has returned a valuable item.
"A few years ago, I found 30,000 NIS ($8,314) in cash, which belonged to a person who had just sold his vehicle," Maman recounted. "For us at Israel Railways, returning lost objects is an integral part of the service, and we call on passengers not to give up. If you lost something on the train, contact us via our hotline, or train staff, and we will do everything we can to return your item."