If you’re flying for the holidays, police have a warning for you: baggage thieves are ready for the rush of travelers.
And if your flight is delayed or you’re slow to get to baggage claim, you could become a target.
That’s what happened to David Holladay, who lives in Carnation.
He and his family were flying back from Australia but their flight from San Francisco to Seattle was delayed.
His black suitcase was sent to Seattle three hours ahead of him on a United flight.
“Were you worried?” asked KIRO 7 investigative reporter Linzi Sheldon.
“A little bit,” Holladay said, “But I thought they would take them off and protect them or something like that.”
“But that’s not what happened,” inquired Sheldon.
“That’s not what happened,” Holladay said.
Instead, his bag took an unexpected trip of its own — surveillance video shows someone swiping it right off the baggage carousel.
“I mean, you feel a little violated, you know, but my first question was, why is it that easy to just grab a bag and run out the door?” Holladay asked.
As he filed a report with the Port of Seattle Police Department, he remembered a tiny piece of technology: an AirTag tucked in a bag. That bag was inside his suitcase, which, as it turned out, was in Tacoma - and Holladay was about to put it to work.
“We’re currently walking the storage units at Tacoma storage and I’m using Find My AirTag, so we’ve been trying different places,” Holladay said in an iPhone video he shot, narrating his search for the suitcase. It was pinging to a self-storage building.
“When I get here, it shows it’s connected,” Holladay said in the video, which he sent to police.
But what now?
“Like when you’ve got an AirTag and you have your suitcase...” Holladay contemplates, “Am I going to get murdered? Like, what’s going to happen? So you just want to be careful with that part.”
“Because you’re basically playing detective up to this point,” Sheldon said.
“That’s right,” Holladay said, “Playing detective, but then, like, how do I actually go get it back?”
That’s where a real detective came in — Detective Darin Beam with the Port of Seattle Police Department.
Thanks to Holladay’s legwork, Beam got a warrant and found the suitcase in a stairwell one floor up.
The suitcase still had Holladay’s shirts and suits, although it was missing sunglasses, some shoes, and a drone.
Beam said it’s hard to see how many thefts have happened this year due to the ransomware attack on the airport in August.
“Unfortunately, with the cyberattack, we’ve lost a lot of that data and we haven’t been able to recover it yet,” he said.
The latest numbers from November 1, 2023, show 341 baggage thefts at the airport last year with a high of 477 the year before.
Beam believes they are making some gains this year with recent officer hires and arrests.
“Around the holidays, are thieves thinking even more, ‘Okay, there’s going to be some high-priced items in these bags’?” Sheldon asked.
“Unfortunately, they do,” Beam said, “And oftentimes they’re not wrong.”
That’s why Beam advises travelers to get to baggage claim quickly and find ways to make sure their bags stand out from the rest.
Beam has a suitcase cover with his kids’ faces on it. He said he ordered it off Amazon for around $20.
“I recognize this immediately when it comes down,” he said.
He also has a bright red, personalized baggage tag with his name.
It can help police identify the bag if it’s stolen and it can deter thieves looking for something non-descript.
Beam also advises travelers to keep valuables in their carry-on. That includes items like jewelry, medications, and electronics.
But Holladay said he’s not focusing on the things he lost.
“In fact, the next day I said thanks to God for the things I got back,” he said. “For each one, like, thank you for that. Thank you for that, because I wouldn’t have had those either.”
©2024 Cox Media Group
