Salt Lake City ? Found: A mountain of wallets and cellphones, eyeglasses, jewelry, blankets  and one oil painting.

It’s a lost and found department of Olympic proportions.

Hundreds of stray items are collected daily at the Winter Games, sealed in plastic bags and taken to a warehouse where they await their absent-minded owners.

On a recent day, the six-person staff was swamped by phone calls from hopeful losers.

Volunteers sweep through venues after every event, bagging the lost goods with a written description of the item. Security checkpoints provide a heavy haul, as spectators forget to pick up watches, rings or pagers they take off to pass through metal detectors.

Todd Gibson of Oregon stopped by four days after he lost his $300 prescription glasses. He had called twice and delayed driving his family back home in hopes the glasses would turn up.

“They have smoky, gray-black frames and side shields,” he said to the woman at the counter, his voice rising in agitation. “We’re leaving right now. The minivan is loaded.”

There was no match in the computer, so the worker delved into boxes of unlogged items and rather miraculously came up with Gibson’s glasses.

“Now I can see the road as I drive through Nevada,” he said.

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Heiden’s view: Eric Heiden, who won five speedskating golds at the 1980 Olympics, believes sports that need judges shouldn’t be in the Olympics  and he isn’t crazy about some of the games’ newer events.

Such as freestyle skiing aerials.

“The consequences of a poor jumper are drastic. I worry about introducing some of these sports with a high risk factor,” said Heiden, an orthopedic surgeon who serves as a team doctor for the U.S. speedskaters.

Heiden’s comments came earlier this week, before American Eric Bergoust took a scary-looking tumble in the aerials on Tuesday.

Bergoust, the 1998 gold medalist, was ahead on the judges’ cards after the first jump but landed awkwardly on his second, smacking his head and shoulders against the snow. He wasn’t seriously hurt but finished 12th and last in the final.

Heiden realizes spectators like some of the games’ new X-treme events.

“Americans are used to immediate rewards. People in America go to NASCAR to see the crashes, they go to hockey games to see the fights. I don’t like to see sports where people risk their lives, but that’s America,” he said.

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Silver buckle: The day after rallying with a dramatic final slalom run to capture a silver medal in the men’s combined event, Bode Miller made a quick trip to Los Angeles to appear on the “Tonight Show” last week.

On his way back, the plane stopped at Las Vegas and Miller had to go through a security checkpoint. His publicist, Rodney Corey, had the silver medal in his pocket and set off the alarm.

So Corey took the medal out of his pocket and placed it in a plastic tray for inspection. Seeing the shiny object, a national guardsman told Corey: “Man, that’s a cool belt buckle.”

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Hot ice ticket: Fred Benjamin, president of U.S. speedskating, hoped to get his children better seats for Wednesday night’s short-track races at the Salt Lake Ice Center.

Then he found out that even upper-deck tickets  which his children have  are going for up to $650 apiece. Face value is $40.

“They’re not getting into the lower decks,” Benjamin quipped. “This has got to be the hottest ticket at the games, other than figure skating.”

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Aussie gold: No typo, that’s sun-splashed Australia with two Winter Olympics golds, alpine-ed Austria with one.

“That’s awesome,” Alisa Camplin said. “We’re a summer country, a sunny country. But this is amazing.”

Camplin won the women’s freestyle aerials Monday to give the Aussies a second Olympic gold medal in three days.

Australia had never won a Winter Olympic gold until Steven Bradbury, in the easiest victory of the games, skated past the wreckage of four faster rivals to take the 1,000-meter speedskating title Saturday night.

Australia’s only two medals so far are gold; winter sports power Austria has 13 medals at these games.

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Now that’s crazy: New Zealand skeleton racer Liz Couch knows which event is just plain nuts at the Winter Olympics, and it’s not her sport.

“Ski jumping. I’ve stood at the top and looked down, and I wouldn’t do it,” said Couch, who enjoys bungee jumping and rock climbing.

Skeleton is getting plenty of attention. Racers plunge face-first down a bobsled chute at speeds up to 80 mph with their chins inches above the ice. The sport returns Wednesday to the Olympics after a 54-year absence.

To skeleton athletes, though, there’s little fear factor. Canadian racer Duff Gibson made the switch from bobsled.

“I always feel like I’m disappointing people when I say skeleton is safer,” he said. “If your head is only an inch from the ground, that means you have nowhere to fall.”