During the 20 years Kay McFaul worked in Disneyland's lost-and-found department, she saw her share of mouse ears, purses, hats, diapers, rings, keys and baby shoes.

"If it was hangin' loose, they lost it," said McFaul, 82, of Anaheim.

Oh ... and one artificial eye.

"These two women were visiting the park and this one woman looks over and notices her friend's eye was missing," McFaul said. "Course, the friend didn't know it. She was blind as a bat."

When the women reported the missing eye, McFaul immediately called the janitorial department and told them to be on the lookout for an eyeball. The rogue eyeball turned up a short time later in an area where the young janitors took their breaks.

"The kids (janitors) were in the back playing marbles and they looked down and noticed their marble was looking up at them," McFaul said.

McFaul said the janitor who brought the eye to her couldn't bear to touch it. "So he comes in and says, 'Here's the eye,' and it was sitting in his (dust) pan," she said.

McFaul came to work at Disneyland in 1969, when she was 47 years old. She and her husband had three kids in college and they needed an extra income, so McFaul started hunting for a job but had no luck.

She never considered applying at Disneyland, where one of her daughters worked.

"My daughter came home one day and I was feeling mighty low," McFaul said. "I said, 'Nobody seems to want to hire an old bag like me.' And my daughter said: 'Apply at Disneyland. They got a lot of old bags out there.' "

McFaul was hired immediately. She worked at Disneyland until she retired in 1989.

During that time, people who visited her to retrieve lost items often came away with more than the items.

"I had a tendency to give a little bit of advice," she confessed.

The missing-ring caper was one example.

"One woman lost her engagement ring with a stone in it 'bout the size of my thumbnail," McFaul said.

A bathroom matron had found it on the sink after the woman had removed it to wash her hands. When the distraught woman visited McFaul to retrieve the ring, McFaul treated the woman to a little advice.

"(I said), 'If you have to take it off, hold it between your teeth,' " McFaul said.

On another occasion, the mother of a family of four lost her purse, which contained all of the family's cash, passports and traveler's checks.

When the family came to retrieve it from lost and found, McFaul treated the mother's teen daughters to a friendly piece of her mind.

"I said: 'Do you really think it's fair that she's responsible for all of this? You're big girls. You have bags. You can be responsible for your own stuff,' " McFaul remembered saying.

Then, the mother surprised McFaul by turning to her husband and adding, "That means you, too!"

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