March 2022 Employees of the Month: Employees orchestrate return of cello player’s lost laptop

March 2022 Employees of the Month Albert Reyes (third from left) and Jonathan Wright (second from right) with MIA Director and CEO Ralph Cutié (far right).
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Thanks to Miami-Dade Aviation Department (MDAD) employees Albert Reyes and Jonathan Wright being tuned in to customer service excellence, they were able to orchestrate the return of a concert cellist’s lost laptop that contained priceless data.

On a recent Thursday evening, MDAD Deputy Director Ken Pyatt was contacted by a friend who asked if he could help her son find a laptop he accidentally left behind on a flight the night before. She explained that her son arrived at MIA from Montreal at 10:30 p.m. the previous day, and he didn’t realize until he was on his way home that he had left his laptop in the seatback pocket. He immediately went back to the airport, only to find the checkpoint closed and no staff from the airline on duty. He returned to MIA the next day and spoke to an airline representative who notified him that no laptop had been turned in.

His mom explained that her son is a renowned concert cellist and his laptop contained recordings and videos of his previous concerts that were not backed up and were virtually irreplaceable. He had activated the “Find Me” option on his laptop and it was pinging its location somewhere in Concourse J.

Ken contacted MDAD Terminal Operations Division Supervisor Albert Reyes, who was already at home after working a full shift that day. He in turn called Terminal Operations Senior Agent on Duty Jonathan Wright, who methodically began to search for the laptop. In addition to juggling his other work duties, Jonathan went to the airline’s ticket counter offices to again check if a laptop had been turned in, but to no avail. Having received a copy of the laptop’s GPS location from Ken, he then went to Concourse J to check the office areas and finally arrived at Gate J5, where the GPS signal was the strongest.

Jonathan searched the ramp level in the airline offices and ramp worker breakroom. He finally ran into a ramp employee who was the manager on duty and described the missing laptop to him. The manager went into his office and brought out the missing laptop, which had been turned in by the aircraft cleaning crew with a note including the date and flight on which it was found. The manager had been busy with numerous operational challenges the day before and had not had the chance to turn it in.

Albert reported the good news to Ken, who relayed the message to the mother and son, who were ecstatic with joy. They immediately came to MIA to collect the laptop and personally thank Jonathan for his efforts. Because Albert and Jonathan worked in harmony with each other to help the cello player reunite with his lost laptop, they were named MIA’s Employees of the Month for March 2022.


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