PITTSBURGH — Jennifer Gooch’s mission was to create a simple website where people could go to find their lost gloves. Even if no happy reunions ever took place, she was just content to spread a little goodwill.
But just a month since went live, the Carnegie Mellon University art student is busier than ever. She’s reunited four gloves with their owners, is working on similar sites for cities around the globe, and is planning a book to showcase her found gloves.
The first glove match was made about a week ago, when a CMU intern from Germany heard about the site and checked it out for her missing beige glove. She found it on the page, under the description “woman’s leather glove with bling.” Sarah Altmeyer said she bought the gloves a few years ago in Germany but later lost one at Carnegie Mellon’s Simon-Newell Hall.
Gooch’s website got 55,000 hits in the 10 days after stories about her project ran all over the world.
“It’s been amazing. Once the surprise kind of waned, I realized that it’s something a lot of people can relate to, and for different reasons,” Gooch said.
More than a dozen businesses and other offices in Pittsburgh now have drop boxes where lost gloves can be placed. Gooch gathers the gloves, photographs them and displays the picture on her website with information about where the glove was found.
Gooch’s site has grown from 21 gloves to a collection of 75. A New York site started soon after, onecoldhand-nyc.com. Sites are also planned for Manitoba, Milan and Philadelphia.
