CEDAR FALLS, IA — My name is Diane Kowalski, I am 61 years old, and I have presided over the lost and found bin at Cornerstone Bible Church since the spring of 2010. In that time I have catalogued 847 individual items, reunited approximately 40 percent of them with their owners, and accumulated a working psychological profile of every adult in this congregation that I will take to my grave.

People think the lost and found is a cardboard box near the welcome desk. It is not. It is a confessional with better lighting. What you leave behind tells me where you were, how long you stayed, and sometimes — in the case of a 2019 incident involving a retainer and a printed email thread I will not describe further — considerably more than that.

“I have returned eleven copies of The Purpose Driven Life, all from the same family, all with no annotations past chapter three. I have said nothing. I will continue to say nothing.”

“Diane is so sweet to keep that little bin organized,” said Associate Pastor Glen Faraday, 54, who left his reading glasses in the fellowship hall every single Sunday from 2017 to 2023 and never once came to claim them. I still have six pairs. He buys new ones monthly. This is between me and the Lord.

I want to be clear: I hold no judgment. Romans 8:1. Look it up. But I do hold a surprisingly nice Columbia fleece jacket, a leather-bound ESV with a name inside I recognize, and a child’s shoe — singular — that has been here since Easter 2014 and whose owner, based on attendance records, is now a sophomore in college.

At press time, a visitor had just handed me a set of keys, a granola bar, and what appeared to be a grocery list written on the back of a tithing envelope, and I was already learning more than I needed to know.