Video – She lost bracelet found after four-day search

Imagine getting home after a long day, pulling off your shoes, and only then noticing something is missing from your wrist. That’s exactly what happened to Dhwani Arvind Gada, a 25-year-old Indian expat working as a social media manager in Dubai.

She had visited Mall of Emirates for a short stop on 22 October before heading home. It was only once she was back in her flat that she realised her bracelet was gone. “I honestly didn’t even know where I had lost it, as it was a very busy day for me,” she told Emirates 24|7. The bracelet wasn’t just any piece of jewellery. “It was my first purchase in Dubai, so it is very special to me,” she said.

What followed was four days of retracing her steps, a few dead ends, and finally a phone call that changed everything. If you’ve ever misplaced something valuable in a new city, you’ll know that mix of hope and doubt she must have felt. For anyone in Kuwait who has gone through the stress of a lost passport and the fee that comes with it, this kind of search will sound familiar.

How she tracked it down

Gada’s search started close to home. She first checked with her residential building’s security team, thinking she might have dropped the bracelet somewhere nearby. Nothing turned up there.

Next, she tried Dubai Metro’s Lost and Found section, since she takes the metro regularly. Staff there were polite, she said, but the bracelet wasn’t with them either. At the National Paints Metro station in Jebel Ali, staff suggested she double-check her own belongings first, in case she had simply misplaced it somewhere. That’s when it clicked. She remembered she had also stopped at the mall that day.

This was Monday, 26 October, four days after she first lost the bracelet. A simple phone call to the mall connected her to its security team, who asked her to send a picture of the bracelet so they could match it to anything found. She sent the photo while still on the metro, heading home.

Before she even got off at the station near her flat, hardly 15 minutes later, she had her answer. The bracelet had been found. “I honestly couldn’t believe it,” she said. She went back to the mall the next day, showed her Emirates ID, filled in a short form, and got her bracelet back.

Not her first experience with lost property in Dubai

Gada moved to Dubai two years ago, completed her Master’s degree there, and then started her career. This wasn’t the first time something she lost had found its way back to her.

“I’ve even lost my passport,” she said, laughing, recalling an incident back when she was a university student new to the city. “I literally panicked. But sure enough, I received it just the way it was. That was my first solid, positive experience of safety in Dubai,” she said.

She rates safety in the city a perfect ten out of ten. “I’m never moving from here,” she added, saying these experiences give her even more reason to see her future there.

Why this matters beyond one bracelet

Stories like this get attention because they touch something ordinary. Most of us have lost a phone, a wallet, or a small item of jewellery somewhere between home and work. The outcome isn’t always as happy as Gada’s.

What stands out here is the process: a residential building checked first, then a transport authority’s lost and found desk, then finally the mall’s own security team. Each step narrowed down where the bracelet could be, until a phone call and a photo solved it in minutes.

For readers in Kuwait, it’s a reminder that malls, metro systems (where they exist), and building security desks often run their own lost and found services, even if they’re not always advertised. If you lose something locally, it’s worth checking with the venue itself before giving up. Kuwait residents dealing with lost official documents can also use the Sahel app’s lost passport service, which works along similar lines, matching your report to what’s been found.

This kind of story also sits alongside other recent cases of lost items eventually turning up. Readers may remember the cat found after 10 days at Dubai airport, after we first reported on 17 October that the cat had vanished at the airport and stayed missing for 5 days. Different situations, but the same pattern: patience, the right channels, and a bit of luck.

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