Travel Tips: Lost and Found

As I approached the table, I could see something had changed. There was a new tension, wary, tentative. Wayne hadn’t gotten lunch, for one thing, although there was no hurry. We had a couple of hours before our next flight. “What’s up?” I ventured as I pulled out a chair.

He hesitated. “I don’t have my wallet,” he said finally. “I think I must have left it on the plane.”

We were in Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport, on our way from San Francisco to New Orleans to meet up with friends. Now Wayne had no money and no ID. “Let’s go back to the gate and look,” I urged as I leapt into action. “It’s possible the plane is still there.”

We raced back; the gate was empty. We asked an agent working a nearby gate where a wallet would have been turned in if it had been found. We talked with a supervisor who very kindly radioed the pilot of the airplane we had come in on, now enroute to Los Angeles. Nothing. I went alone to check at Lost and Found, which was on the other side of Security, because Wayne wouldn’t have been able to get back in without his ID. Nothing.

The wallet was gone. Wayne was glum, angry with himself for leaving it on his seat after paying for a drink on the plane. The vision of the long-anticipated weekend was starting to look like a disaster. Suddenly he took a deep breath, sat up straight and exclaimed, “I’m going to have an even better time in New Orleans anyway!”

I have a friend I used to travel with who always reminded me that “Travel is an Adventure” when I got stressed about a missed plane or a crummy hotel room. You can choose to stay in the strong negative place, or you can choose to let go of it and make up for the hassle by having an especially good time of life. Wayne took the high road and I was grateful.

We journeyed on and partied as if we had no worries, spending my money instead of his. This is what credit cards are for, right? Our friends joined us in gorging on raw oysters and beer, savoring gumbo and good Dixieland jazz and strutting with the best of them on the first night of Mardi Gras. We told stories about the lost wallet and Wayne took some ribbing. True, we also took care of business. We made calls from the hotel to get credit card numbers and cancel them. Wayne had fortunately applied for a new driver’s license before we left on our trip and it had arrived at his home in Santa Cruz while we were gone. He got someone there to fax a copy of it to the hotel in New Orleans, but the hotel had a problem with their fax machine so we never did receive it. Good idea, but he still had no ID to get back into the airport for the homeward journey.

Wayne had let go of his disappointment and frustration, but in the back of my mind was the real challenge: getting him through airport security without identification in order to go home. Given the nature of security these days, it’s obvious this is the kind of issue you can’t leave for the last minute. I called our airline’s reservations office and asked for a Customer Service supervisor. When I explained our situation, she contacted the airline’s Airport Manager who called me back. He set us up to meet with the Supervisor on Duty the morning of our flight. We got her name and there we were – everything that could be done had been and it would be what it was.

We arrived at the airport two hours early, not sure what to expect. At the ticket counter, we asked for the supervisor by name and she was expecting us. She assured us this wasn’t an isolated thing; people lose their wallet or have their wallet stolen and most airports have a procedure in place to take care of it. She looked at my ID and we checked in. Then she walked with us to security and escorted us through. Wayne and his luggage were searched thoroughly, which wasn’t a surprise. It took about 15 minutes plus a few minutes to repack his bag and put his belt and shoes on, but we had no trouble. Soon we were on our way to the gate with plenty of time for coffee. So smooth, who would have guessed?

I guess the moral of this story is Watch Your Wallet. Keep an extra copy of your drivers license or passport in your luggage. And if it all goes wrong, ask for help. Happy travels!