As a "Gate Agent" I go to extreme lengths to find the owner as soon as I discover it. Since at Southwest, our FA's clean after every flight, it's pretty easy to find something and know it came from one of the passengers on the flight inbound. When I worked at my old station in BOS, I wouldn't always turn it in to our baggage service office like we were supposed to since they generally didn't care and would just ship the items off to corporate for them to try and find the item. With a little bit of searching through the device, I was always successful finding the owner and giving them a call and telling them I have their IPOD/IPAD/Kindle,etc.
I promise you folks, not all your 'gate agents' are bad guys!