When Isla Agir’s glasses had been knocked from her palms and onto the southbound No. 6 line monitor at 14th Road-Union Sq. final Thursday morning, she wasn’t certain she could be reunited with them.
“It’s going to cost me, if I buy here, $8,000,” Agir mentioned of her Italian-made Lombardo frames. “They have the thinner lenses with the three effects and the blue vision, so it was not my intent for them to fall.”
By that very same evening, the 57-year-old Manhattan lady had the glasses again in her possession after a crew of MTA employees used a pole with a “grabber” claw to pluck them from the south finish of the native monitor.
They’d been returned for holding to station agent Luis Gomez, who donned latex gloves to wash them with disinfectant wipes.
“I remembered the first wagon — the first car — and I saw them directly drop down under the middle of the train,” Agir advised THE CITY. “When I went back later, I looked, I didn’t see, so I went upstairs and asked the person who worked there for help.”
Assist would ultimately arrive from Harlem within the type of an MTA “Combined Action Team.” Its members had been on the 145th Road station, strolling the platforms with flashlights aimed on the B and D line tracks whereas on the lookout for a Samsung Galaxy telephone.
The searches at 145th Road and at Union Sq. had been among the many hundreds of dropped-property calls MTA employees reply to every yr, in response to company information.
The objects aren’t all the time simple to identify.
At 145th Road, the Galaxy telephone described by its proprietor’s daughter as being in a pink case on the northbound B monitor was truly in a darkish case — and on the southbound D.
“She was overjoyed, she said, ‘Thank you so much,’” station agent Natasha Simon mentioned after notifying the daughter that the telephone had been recovered and could be saved for her to reclaim it.
The employees then headed upstairs to St. Nicholas Avenue to await their subsequent name, which dispatched them to 14th Road.
“On the 6 line, track southbound,” sign supervisor Godwin DeWeever mentioned throughout a name with the MTA’s operations management middle. “Glasses?”
Numbers supplied to THE CITY by the MTA present there have been greater than 6,700 dropped-property calls to this point this yr. There have been 11,147 in all of 2024, 12,054 the earlier yr and 10,490 in 2022.
The claw software utilized by knowledgeable stuff-grabbers, Aug. 14, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
Among the many more-curious objects pulled from the tracks: a trumpet on the thirty ninth Avenue cease on the N/W strains in Lengthy Island Metropolis, Queens; a 32-inch tv on the Burnside Avenue station alongside the No. 4 in Morris Heights, The Bronx; and even a pair of dentures from the No. 6 line’s Bronx terminal at Pelham Bay Park.
Butter-fingered riders are often grateful to the employees who retrieve their stuff out of the trail of subway trains, the fishers say.
“They try to give you tips,” mentioned Vladimir Mushinsky, an motion staff member who extra generally responds to calls about malfunctioning alerts. “I say, ‘No, no, no!’”
Maintain It Transferring
Since 2015, MTA information reveals that transit employees have recovered greater than 8,400 cell phones from the tracks, adopted by greater than 700 eyeglasses.
“Citi Bikes, shopping carts from the grocery store,” mentioned Daniel Campbell, superintendent of a staff made up of monitor inspectors and sign and third-rail maintainers. “It seems all types of stuff makes its way onto the tracks.”
Wi-fi AirPods and headphones are more and more changing into dropped-on-the-tracks casualties within the subway, with greater than 700 calls alone this yr, in response to the MTA. That’s second solely to the 1,200 calls about dropped cell phones.
“It’s daily — it can range from one or two [calls] a day to upwards of 10,” Campbell mentioned. “And that’s in addition to the other calls affecting service.”
The responses are carried out with security protocols designed to guard employees and to maintain trains transferring with little or no impression on service. The operations management middle and practice operators are advised prematurely of a dropped-property crew’s location, with employees waving flashlights to additional alert these working the trains.
An MTA crew reveals as much as the 145th Road station in Harlem to retrieve an merchandise on the tracks, Aug. 14, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
“All of that is to just keep things moving, for us to work in between trains without disturbing service,” Campbell mentioned.
A 22-year-veteran of New York Metropolis Transit, Campbell added that riders who spill issues onto the tracks can enhance their possibilities of having objects recovered if they supply particular location info to the MTA.
These could be numbers on station partitions or close by staircases or elevators, the path of subway service and whether or not the monitor is native or categorical.
“The more detail, the better,” Campbell mentioned.
In Agir’s case, her consideration to element when reporting her dropped glasses helped shave how a lot time employees spent discovering them, even when they at first retrieved a battered pair of blue sun shades that had been coated in subway scum.
Isla Agir’s glasses after being plucked from the tracks at Union Sq., Aug. 14, 2025. Credit score: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
“I don’t know, those look like they’ve been there a while,” Campbell mentioned once they picked up the primary set of less-expensive trying shades.
A couple of minutes later and additional down the monitor, the employees noticed Agir’s glasses.
She mentioned she would don’t have any drawback placing them on once more, including that she by no means thought-about going onto the tracks herself.
“No, no, no, I know the stories — when I study English, they show us,” she mentioned. “I’m just so happy, I’m thankful for those workers.”
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