One More Loss

When my father died last year, my parents had been married 65 years. He’d placed a ring of diamonds and gold -- engagement and wedding rings merged into one -- on my mother’s finger in the midst of the Depression, when he, like most Americans, was hard-pressed to afford basic necessities. My mother wore her ring nearly every day of those 65 years.

Last month, my mother died in Las Cruces, N.M. Before her death, she had told me that her ring would be mine. On the night before a memorial service for her, I placed the ring in its box and put it in my suitcase, thinking that I would repack before my return to Denver. I didn’t.

The next day I checked my suitcase at the airport in El Paso, boarded my plane and flew home. When I retrieved the bag at the Denver airport, it bore the unmistakable signs of life after 9/11 -- a yellow plastic tie and the sticker of the Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency charged with reducing our fear of dying in a terrorist attack 30,000 feet above Earth.

Like every air traveler’s suitcase, my bag had been opened and inspected -- and my mother’s wedding ring was missing. While we were not a demonstrative or sentimental family, there was no mistaking how much that ring had meant to my mother and how much it now meant to me: It represented her courage and tranquillity in the face of death. And now it was gone.

I went to the TSA’s Web site to download a two-page claim form. When I was set to mail in the form, I discovered the second page was missing. I went back to the site to download another form and was greeted by the message: “The server is not responding or encountering an unexpected error.” The site still wasn’t working the following day. Fortunately, I found the lost page and mailed in the form.

I also contacted the TSA office in El Paso to report the loss. I was told that the baggage inspectors who might have gone through my luggage in search of a bomb or a box cutter would be questioned, and the TSA manager would get back to me.

I tried to register a complaint with my carrier, United, too. The voice at the other end of the phone identified himself as Simon and said his “speech-activated” system would allow him to find the information I needed. I was given a choice of “delayed bag,” “damaged bag,” “lost and found” (for items left at the airport or on the plane) or “different problem.” Theft was a different problem, and apparently it’s increasingly common.

According to a recent news story, the TSA has received, in its first six months of operation, more than 6,700 claims from air travelers about missing possessions, ranging from binoculars to jewelry. About 485 of them have been settled, 47 withdrawn and 145 “denied on the grounds that no negligence was found,” according to the story. That leaves more than 6,000 awaiting action.

TSA officials are undaunted. “It’s highly unlikely that your bag will suffer any damage or any loss from the TSA side of the ledger as it makes its way through the system,” TSA spokesman Robert Johnson told the Washington Post. “We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to malfeasance of anyone working for TSA. It’s important for people to have confidence in the system.”

My experience leaves no basis for confidence. When I broke through United’s automated system and spoke to a real human in its baggage services, she declared that United bore no responsibility and could not respond to my complaint because, with the TSA in charge of screening luggage, the airline was “not authorized” to open bags.

The TSA manager in El Paso, meanwhile, had gotten back to me with the word that all the baggage handlers had denied any wrongdoing. Investigation closed. My only remaining option was to file the claim with the national office.

The claim form asked me to assign a value to the object lost.

Assign a value? As in monetary?

In her last years, coping with an uncertain memory, my mother wrote many notes to herself. When I cleaned up her apartment after her death, I found a trove of them, ranging from birth dates of family members to sayings taught to her by her grandmother. I had collected the notes in an envelope, placing it next to the ring box in my suitcase.

The note at the top of the deck, written in Mother’s distinctive, back-slanting handwriting, read: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The envelope was undisturbed. I imagined the thief of my mother’s ring hadn’t bothered to check it for money -- or guidance.

Each new effort to secure our physical safety introduces a new vulnerability. The TSA’s baggage inspectors may save our lives from terrorists, but travelers shouldn’t trust them to guard the possessions that give meaning and depth to the lives saved.