“It’s a big city, Somebody’s going to drop something.”

"And somebody, if the item is sufficiently treasured, is going to try to pick it up. These are the fishermen of the (NYC) subway system, cobbling together homemade instruments to pluck items from the tracks and release them to a grateful city."

They have lifted bikes and basketballs.

One worker, Bob Devine, recently recovered the detritus of a lover’s quarrel: a bag of clothes hurled beside a third rail in the Bronx during an argument.

“We’re O.K. now,” the man told Mr. Devine, repacking his jeans.

For as long as there have been subway tracks, New Yorkers — haggard, perpetually busy and forever jostling for space — have been dropping things on them.

But in recent years, the workers say, the rigors of the job have multiplied, with smartphone proliferation and in-station Wi-Fi producing a more distracted ridership and sending more phones tumbling to the tracks.

“That’s job security,” said Mr. Devine, a 30-year veteran of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

There is the occasional aggrieved passenger, chafing at the response time if a crew is traveling from another call at a far-off station. But almost universally, riders are appreciative. A few have tried to tip the workers, though they say they have never accepted.

“A little hug, we take,” Mr. Geraghty said. “I usually tell them, if it’s a man: ‘Take your wife out. Have a good time on us.’ ”