Business is booming for subway workers who retrieve cellphones and other belongings that fall onto the tracks. NY1's Jose Martinez got a closer look at the crew in action.

With a call to a Lower Manhattan subway station, Bob Devine swings into action for another butterfingered commuter. He hops onto a 6 train, a tool he calls "the gripper" firmly in hand.

"It seems that a customer dropped their cellphone at 28th Street," Devine said. "We're going to go look, try to find a phone."

Devine is a part of an increasingly busy crew of subway workers stationed across the city to fetch items that straphangers have accidentally fumbled onto the tracks. On this day, a woman heading to work lost her phone when it tumbled over the platform.

Devine lowers the gripper for the grab, and a quick handoff.

Devine and the others who do this work have conducted all kinds of recovery missions.

"People's teeth, false teeth," Devine said. "I guess they were spitting or something and the teeth came out."

"A frozen turkey one time. A bottle of rum," said Pierre Moringlan, an MTA track inspector. "And we get a lot of calls, believe it or not, for wedding rings."

"Anything you can think of, they drop it," said Vincent Mangia, an MTA track inspector. "If you can drop it, they drop it."

And they are busier than ever. Through the first 10 months of the year, the Lower Manhattan crew has gone out on more than 3,300 calls to recover dropped property from the tracks. That's a figure they say keeps rising as the popularity of handheld devices keeps going up.

Devine's next assistance call this day involves another high-tech item: a hard drive. Within moments of arriving at the Park Place station, Devine fishes it from the tracks.

"I was running down the stairs and I had a hard drive in my pocket. It fell out of my pocket and into the tracks," said Ricardo Cano, who dropped the hard drive onto the tracks.

He went to the token booth, and help soon arrived.

"I was really lucky," Cano said. "You know, these guys are stationed here, and it took them only 10 minutes to get here."

To do a job that they say should be left to the pros.

"The best thing you can do is just go tell the booth and then go back down and watch your stuff," Devine said.

But before that, hold onto it tight.