NORTH BEND — It only takes a few laps around the track and a little sweat on his brow for a jacket to vanish completely from Bayley Neff’s memory.

Bayley has lost several jackets that way, the Hillcrest Elementary fourth-grader said last week after being reunited with a green fleece hoodie he misplaced three months ago.

“I usually get hot all the time, so I usually take it off,” Bayley said. “(My parents) kept on getting mad at me because I usually lose my jackets.”

While Bayley may seem a little forgetful, it’s not unusual to find dozens or more jackets, sweatshirts, hats and gloves hanging in the school’s Lost and Found. Stationed in a corner of the elementary school’s lower hall on the final days of class, layers of clothing were so thick children could barely find their belongings without digging.

Although items are returned to students who are willing to make the search, or those whose names are written on care labels, much of Lost and Found finds its way to a local charity, said Principal Bruce Martin. After June 13, the misplaced items will be donated to the Foster Care Clothes Closet in Charleston.

“If they are not claimed, they do no good sitting in a bag,” Martin said. “We want to get them back in the hands of kids again.”

He noted the items may be held at the school as late as July to give parents a chance to recover their kids’ stuff.

The main reason children lose their clothing is the weather, Martin said. Students shed their jackets as the day gets warmer, and will often leave them on the playground for teachers to collect.

“If they don’t put names in it, we can’t get them back to who they belong to,” Martin said.

Lost and Found is full so often that the school asks parents, via the school newsletter, to check for their children’s belongings at least every other month. Martin said the school can’t keep the items because it simply doesn’t have the room. Glasses and lunch boxes and the occasional toy also are on the list of the lost.

Debbie Jolley, Hillcrest’s head custodian, handles much of Lost and Found — placing the clothing out where parents and children can rummage and bagging up the leftovers. She said she gathers those abandoned coats, hats and gloves every winter, spring and summer break for donation, but feels for the parents of absent-minded students.

“The coats don’t come cheap so we’d really like to get them back,” Jolley said. “We wouldn’t have half this problem if they got the names.”

Martin and Jolley said they sometimes ask students if they’ve lost anything lately, and they’ll reply no — at least until their coats or jackets are held up before them.

“They always have that look like ‘Oh yeah, that’s mine!’” Martin said.

This year, Jolley said she donated three- to four- 33 gallon trash bags full of clothing per holiday to local charities, and expects to deliver seven more to the Foster Care Clothes Closet.

There are unusual things in Lost and Found, too. Men’s pants and lunch boxes filled with molding food, Jolley said, laughing. People sometimes visit the campus for non-school events.

You lose it, they’ll use it

Jacque Kogler, a foster parent and a member of the Foster Parents of Coos County, said she helps run the Foster Care Clothes Closet, which supplies foster parents with clothing for their wards.

“Almost always they only have what they’ve got on them,” Kogler said.

Receiving clothing from Hillcrest and Myrtle Crest Elementary School in Myrtle Point, among others, gives foster parents a needed hand, she said.

“It’s a big help because even though you’re getting paid to take care of the kids, clothing is very expensive,” Kogler said. “(It is) to help clothe our foster children, so they feel good about themselves.

“It’s like they have something that belongs to them in the house they are in.”