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How to Catch a Baggage Thief: An Interview with an Airport Good Samaritan

Where: JFK International Airport [map], New York, NY, United States
July 14, 2010 at 2:33 PM | by | Comment (1)

Did you check your bag onto a flight only to find that it didn't arrive with you and—horror of horrors—it's gone completely missing? Unfortunately, baggage theft at airports is problem and the issue hit home this week for our frequent traveling friend Dan S., who not only recently lost a bag but who caught a JFK Airport janitor red-handed stealing bags and had him arrested.

We were thirsty for the whole dramatic story, and Dan was nice enough to take a few minutes out from jetting around the country to answer our questions, so enjoy:

Jaunted: So before we get to the meat of the matter, your own bags went missing recently?

Dan: My bag wasn't stolen on this trip...but it was stolen out of JFK after I had to gate check it back in May. It was a nice TUMI I usually never check, but the overheard space on the flight was full. At the time, when I did the police reports for that incident, the police told me that [the thieves] commonly take the bags into the bathrooms and go through them and ditch anything that isn't of value.

Jaunted: Not cool. So what happened this week when you caught the JFK janitor doing this exact thing?

Dan: Basically when I walked into the bathroom at JFK at 4am and saw the janitor doing that, my jaw dropped, and I knew how much the process sucked for me after my bag was stolen, and I wanted to try and help somebody else out and not make them deal with that.

Jaunted: Noble ambitions! So how did you get the guy arrested? What did you do to summon the police?

Dan: It was simple. Googled the JFK Police number, called them, and they arrived within 10 minutes.

Jaunted: Where exactly was this and what had you snooping around the airport at 4am?

Dan: It was at Delta's Terminal 3. I had a situation last night which caused me to mis-connect to my Vegas flight. Delta gave me a hotel voucher to the JFK Plaza Hotel, but that hotel is so horribly mis-managed it took me 2 hours to even approach the front desk, and 5 different keys to 5 different occupied rooms for the hotel to finally realize that they were overbooked. At that point it was 3am and I decided just to go back to the airport and sleep and shower in the lounge there since my flight to Vegas was at 7am.

Poor Dan. It just wasn't his travel day, aside from the fact that he can now take responsibility for removing another airport baggage thief from pilfering your luggage. Like we always say: be safe and stay alert when you travel, and—at risk of sounding like McGruff the Crime Dog—you too can help take a bite out of [airport] crime.

Got a similar story? Share it and help others to be informed while traveling. Let us know!

[Photo: elPadawan]

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Baggage thief

I just flew out of JFK and my child's car seat disappeared. Same situation where there was no room left for it to fit on the plane. We gate checked it and that's the last we saw of it. So, of course we didn't have it to use at our destination. I"m going to keep my eyes open when using the bathroom in airports. Way to go crime buster! http://bit.ly/Quintess
DEL on July 19, 2010 at 3:54 AM #Permalink

Return to » How to Catch a Baggage Thief: An Interview with an Airport Good Samaritan

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