A Missing Life Preserver, Last Seen on the Brooklyn Bridge

Todd Heisler/The New York Times A life preserver bearing the name S.S. Montero disappeared from the wall of Montero’s Bar and Grill on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn last month.

In what could be a clue in the case of the life preserver that went missing from Montero Bar and Grill last month, a pedestrian who regularly walks the Brooklyn Bridge said he was certain that he saw a man carrying it to Manhattan.

“It’s not the most typical object,” said the pedestrian, Michael Napolitano, 52, an assistant administrator at New York University’s journalism department.

Mr. Napolitano walks home from work to South Park Slope every evening, he said. He said he believed he saw the man in question on July 2 or 3, but after reading a column describing the theft and how the preserver was first noticed missing June 25, he said he may have seen it that same week, earlier than his first estimate.

“I saw a guy coming out of the staircase, coming out of the Cadman Plaza area,” Mr. Napolitano said. He was in his early 20s, and struck Mr. Napolitano as a tourist.

“Only because of the location, for one thing,” he said. “He was too casually dressed to be coming from work. You kind of get a read for who’s who up there. I’m up there all the time. I knew who else the regulars would be coming from that direction.”

He has no doubt about what the man was carrying under his arm: a life preserver that read “S.S. Montero.” It was a gift to the bar from a nephew of the owner in the 1990s, and had been hanging on the wall, alongside genuine preservers from old ships, ever since. A bartender noticed on June 25 that the preserver had disappeared. The bar wants it back.

Mr. Napolitano has never been inside Montero’s, but he lived nearby for several years and knew the name. “Why would a guy have that?” he asked. “Seeing anything in broad daylight coming out of Montero’s is sort of unusual.”

The bar’s owner, Pepe Montero, found hope in the sighting. If someone cared enough to carry the preserver over the Brooklyn Bridge, maybe it’s being kept somewhere and has not been thrown out with the garbage.

“Any news is good news,” he said.