TRAVEL INSIDER : Airport Baggage Thieves Know All Tricks of Trade : Luggage: The single best policy to avoid loss, theft or damage is to maintain all-around vigilance.

Some people are lucky with luggage. In flights across four continents, passing through airports in Harare, Kiev, Lima and even Los Angeles, I’ve had nothing lost, nothing stolen.

Jerry Hulse, my much-traveled predecessor in these pages, recalls two lost bags in thirtysome years as a professional traveler--a testimony to the competence of airlines and airports the world over.

But sooner or later, your number comes up. And with the heavy traffic of summer upon us, and troubling recent reports from Chicago, a traveler can’t help but think about luggage and loss and worse.

“We’re into our prime-time season now,” warns Sgt. Ken Bowers of the 180-officer Los Angeles International Airport police force.

The Chicago story: After hearing rumors of ripoffs by employees at O’Hare Airport, the FBI in 1989 sent a special agent under cover as a baggage handler for six months. When operations GrabBag and Rampcheck finally came to a climax last May, agents seized $250,000 worth of goods and cash and filed charges against 16 airport workers, accusing them of taking jewelry, video equipment, mink coats, cash and even guns from passengers’ bags.

Airport contractors “hire these people, and they don’t pay them a lot of money,” said Fred Foreman, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, speculating on the roots of inside baggage thievery.

The Chicago theft ring allegedly fed heavily upon baggage being transferred from one airline to another, because responsibility was difficult to assign. Foreman said the thieves simply zipped or ripped bags open, took what they liked, then sent the luggage on its way, some of it “pretty well torn up.” Stolen goods were often stashed in public areas until the end of the rogue baggage handler’s shift. By one account, an airport security guard knowingly helped carry booty to a thief’s car.

Fifteen of the accused workers were employed by Dynair Services Inc., an airport contractor that provides baggage handlers and other services for domestic and foreign airlines at 80 U.S. airports, including LAX.

A Dynair spokesperson in the firm’s Reston, Va., headquarters declined to comment on the Chicago case, citing pending legal action. But a spokesman here affirmed that Dynair contracts with about 30 international carriers to handle baggage on roughly 190 international flights through LAX every week. Airport authorities report no particular problems with Dynair.

But that’s not to say the thievery business isn’t going strong in other airport corridors.

Arriving at LAX in April, 1991, British concert violinist Erich Gruenberg briefly turned away from his luggage cart and the tan, oblong case it held. Moments later, he discovered that the case--and the 260-year-old, $500,000 Stradivarius violin inside it--had been stolen. (Nine months later, police in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, caught a former Los Angeles resident trying to sell the same violin, and returned it to its owner.)

In July, 1991, Glendale police searched an apartment used by Luis Munoz Cardenas, 40, and Jorge Castillo, 42, believing that they were on the trail of a drug-smuggling ring. Instead, the police found more than 100 pieces of luggage, apparently stolen from LAX, Burbank and perhaps other Southern California airports. Both men pleaded guilty to grand theft, and both were sentenced to 16 months in state prison.

Last year, travelers at LAX reported 1,874 non-auto thefts, of which the vast majority were stolen baggage. Most of these thefts took place in the peak travel months of summer, making luggage thievery the airport crime of choice. Airport records show that police made 121 arrests in such cases--about one for every 18 reports filed.

“Baggage theft is a very hard thing to catch,” says Sgt. Mike Vaccariello of the LAX police. Even though the airport police force includes as many as 10 plain-clothes officers at a time watching for thefts, he says, “the people who do it are very professional; it’s what they do for a living.”

Bowers acknowledges that “there are always going to be internal problems” among baggage handlers, but he estimates that 90% of LAX’s reported thefts are outside jobs--the work of professional airport thieves or local criminals who see an opportunity in the baggage claim area.

How can a traveler keep his or her luggage out of trouble?

Foreman, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, said he almost always travels light and carries an overnight bag on board, rather than checking luggage through. On longer trips, he suggested, travelers should “keep your valuable items on you, and your personal effects, and anything of sentimental value. And at least one extra pair of underwear. You never know.”

Airport officials offer a series of time-tested answers:

* Be sure your name and address are obvious on the baggage that you have to check through.

* Be sure the same information is on the inside of your baggage, in case the outside information is lost or removed. (Every three or four months, airport officials say, they turn over several truckloads of untraceable luggage to the city for sale at auction.)

* Leave at least an hour’s layover when you’re transferring from one plane to another.

* Don’t leave your property unattended or ask a stranger to keep an eye on it.

* Don’t leave your car unattended at the airport.

* If you fear your luggage is lost, find the proper airline officials and fill out a report.

* If you have reason to suspect your luggage may be stolen rather than lost, call airport police and then call your airline. (At LAX, the police number is 310-646-6254, or 310-646-7911 for emergencies.)

But as in many things, all-around vigilance is a better policy than any single measure.

“Every three or four months, we have a jewelry salesman come through, and he’s lost $25,000 or $50,000 in jewelry,” says Bowers. Those salesmen are among the most theft-conscious travelers on the planet, Bowers notes, but in most cases “a team followed him into town, and just waited for that right moment, that one time when he was not paying attention to his briefcase.”

Police say the most attractive airport targets are video cassette recorders and cameras (which are easily identifiable, since they usually come in their own cases), attache cases and tote bags and other accessories likely to include passports or plane tickets.

Professionals usually work in groups of two or more, Vaccariello says, and most often rely on distraction: One will ask a stranger a question, or bump into the stranger, while the other picks up the bag and steps away into a crowd.

One internationally popular gambit is the spill: One thief uses toothpaste or some equally messy substance to deposit a stain on a traveler’s pants, shirt or jacket. An accomplice offers to help clean it up, and amid the confusion and physical contact, the traveler’s baggage is suddenly gone.

Yet another technique, and a remarkably brazen one, is the ticket counter theft. A thief steps up behind you and eases away your bags as you step forward to face a ticket-counter representative. These ticket agents, who must concentrate on your ticket, their computers and their co-workers, are unlikely to recognize such an act until it’s too late.

“I’ve worked plainclothes for almost three years, and I’ve seen these professional operators,” says Bowers. “If you’re watching your property, they signal each other and leave. They’re looking for the easy mark, and when you’ve got 40,000 people a day coming through the airport, there’s gonna be one out there.”