Elderly Man’s Ordeal : Failed homecoming: A return to Romania becomes 15 days of mix-ups. His family blames Pan Am, which denies responsibility.

An elderly Romanian immigrant trying to return to his native country to live out his last years instead went on a 15-day odyssey through airports in Europe and the United States and wound up back in Southern California debilitated by a stroke, his family says.

Samuel Simeonas, 75, who speaks only Romanian, was finally picked up by his frantic relatives at a hospital in San Jose--20 days after he had boarded a Pan American World Airways plane for what was supposed to be the first leg of a 16-hour trip to Bucharest, Romania, said his son, Niel Simeonas of Studio City.

The elderly man wandered around airports in New York, Switzerland, Germany and Hungary for five days before he made it to Bucharest, his son said. But by then, Romanian officials had received so many calls about Simeonas from the United States that he was not allowed to leave Otopeni International Airport, according to his family. He was detained for two days and put on a plane back to America.

He somehow wound up in San Jose, where authorities located him at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Niel Simeonas said doctors told him that his father had suffered a stroke brought on by stress and fatigue.

Adriana Simeonas said that when she purchased her father-in-law’s ticket and helped put him on the plane, she emphasized to airline personnel that he needed special assistance in making his two connections in New York and Frankfurt, West Germany.

“I said, ‘I want to pay extra to have somebody to take care of him,’ ” she recalled. “They said, ‘No need, we will take care of him.’ ”

Niel Simeonas believes that his father would have been allowed to enter Romania had he arrived on time. He speculated that the hard-line Communist officials were spooked by all the phone calls from the United States.

“They are a communist country,” Simeonas said. “My father had all this noise about him, and they didn’t know what kind of a person he was.”

Pan American spokeswoman Pam Hanlon said the airline cannot be blamed for Simeonas’ tardiness in arriving in Romania. Hanlon said Simeonas missed his connection to Bucharest in Frankfurt, and Pan Am officials booked him on a flight on another airline. Pan Am employees may have offered to give Simeonas assistance, she said, but the airline does not have a special assistance program for adults.

“There is no responsibility of the airline in a situation like this,” she said.

Arnold Koerfer, a Pan Am passenger services agent in Los Angeles, said that when Simeonas was barred from entering Romania, the airline flew him back to the United States without charge. Simeonas was destined for Los Angeles, said Koerfer, who had no idea how the elderly man wound up in San Jose.

Simeonas’ late arrival had nothing to do with Romania’s decision to deny him entry into the country, Koerfer said.

“They didn’t want him back because they didn’t want to pay for his upkeep,” Koerfer said of the Romanians. Koerfer said he was told by one of Simeonas’ relatives that the elderly man “was not mentally competent before he left.”

However, Niel Simeonas insisted that his father was healthy and self-reliant before the journey. During the three years that he lived in Los Angeles, Simeonas had his own apartment and cooked, cleaned and shopped on his own, his son said.

Simeonas is presently in a nursing home and requires constant attention, his son said.

“He is like a zombie. Half the time he thinks he is in Europe. He is scared, and he keeps saying ‘I don’t want to fly.’ ”

Niel Simeonas has hired attorney Walter J. Wabby to represent the family in an effort to collect compensation from the airline for his father’s suffering. Because Simeonas cannot relate what happened to him after leaving Los Angeles, his family and Wabby have tried to reconstruct his journey based on stamps on his passport and on phone calls from Pan Am officials during the trip.

Based on that information, it was determined that Simeonas flew nonstop from Los Angeles to New York. Once there, instead of boarding a connecting flight to Frankfurt, Simeonas somehow ended up in Zurich.

Niel Simeonas said that on March 9, Pan Am officials informed him they had located his father in Zurich and would put him on a plane to Bucharest immediately. The next day, airline personnel called back and said they had accidentally sent him to Budapest, Hungary, instead of Bucharest, the son said.

According to his passport, Simeonas went through customs in both Zurich and Frankfurt on March 11, and later that day, Wabby said, he landed in Romania.

“During that time, nobody knows what he ate, where he slept,” Niel Simeonas said. “I didn’t sleep for nights and nights. I was sitting on the phone every night trying to track him down.

“I was calling the airport in Bucharest every day, and my relatives went there every day looking for him, waiting for him to arrive.”

During his two days at the Bucharest airport, the elderly man could see his relatives through a glass partition but could not talk to them, Wabby said.

On March 13, Niel Simeonas said, Pan Am officials telephoned and said that they would fly Simeonas back to Los Angeles and that the elderly man would arrive at LAX on March 16.

But when he went to retrieve his father, the son said, he was told by the airline that Simeonas had arrived in Los Angeles the day before.

Seven days later, he said, he was alerted by authorities that Simeonas was in the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.

According to hospital records, Simeonas arrived there on March 21, five days after Pan Am officials said he was supposed to have arrived in Los Angeles.

Niel Simeonas said he decided to hire a lawyer when the airline refused to give him $400 for his father’s luggage, which was never sent back from Romania.

“He lost his life, his papers, and now they won’t send me anything because I don’t have the luggage stubs anymore,” the son said.