Urns containing ashes among lost and found items

Two items stand out in Donovan Alvarado's lost and found office at the end of a cavernous corridor of Mexico City's metro system: Urns containing the ashes of a child and of a young man.

Alvarado, 40, is the guardian of the only missing objects office of a subway system with 195 stations and 5.5 million daily users, some of whom are a forgetful bunch.

The 2,000 items that are lost each year end up in the badly-lit room at the end of Candelaria station, which is filled with identification cards, backpacks, bicycles, cellphones, toys, strollers, clothes and a mountain of shoes.