Fish stolen after baggage was checked

By The Associated Press

PEGGY CLONINGER / AP Ray Bolanos of Kenmore holds one of the halibut he caught.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

ANCHORAGE — When Barbara Kagerer's telephone rang, she figured it was her parents calling to say they'd had a great trip to Alaska and were back in Seattle.

She was partly right. It was her dad on the line, calling from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. "My fish!" he yelled into the phone. "They stole my fish!"

Somewhere between Anchorage and Seattle, about 40 meticulously wrapped and packed 1-pound pieces of fresh-caught halibut vanished from Ray Bolanos's checked baggage.

"I really just feel violated," Bolanos said from his home in Kenmore.

Bolanos suspects the pilfering took place in Anchorage, because his Continental Airlines flight was delayed leaving the city by about an hour. Officials at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport aren't so sure the theft happened at their airport and not at Sea-Tac.

Bolanos finds the whole thing unsettling. If someone can steal 40 pounds of fish from a passenger's baggage without anyone noticing, he asked, "What's stopping them from putting a bomb in there and putting it on the plane?"

"There's no such thing as a perfect system," said Corky Caldwell, federal security director at Anchorage international. But he said checks and balances are in place to prevent such a thing.

As of last night, the fish was still missing, Bolanos said.

"If they had been found," he said, "they would be smelling pretty bad."

Bolanos and his wife were in Alaska less than a week. They flew into Anchorage on Father's Day to visit their daughter and her family.
 
The following day, June 21, the Bolanoses flew in a small plane to Seldovia, a village of about 300 on the south shore of Kachemak Bay, to stay in a bed-and-breakfast and go on a halibut charter with Seldovia Fishing Adventures.

"My dad caught the biggest fish on the boat," Kagerer said, "75 pounds and 60 pounds."

She said her mom landed a 50-pounder. Her parents were thrilled. They took pictures and planned to share the fish with friends and relatives in Washington.

The Bolanoses took the fish to be wrapped and packed while they went with their family to celebrate their 48th wedding anniversary.

On June 24, the family picked up the halibut. Bolanos said he made sure both coolers were under the airline's 50-pound limit. He secured the chests with rope and headed to the airport, where he checked the coolers at the curb.

Bolanos said his bags appeared on the luggage carousel at Sea-Tac almost immediately after he arrived. He said one of the coolers came out missing the rope he'd tied around it in Anchorage. When he lifted the chest, it was much lighter than it was supposed to be. Inside, Bolanos found his rope and a few halibut scraps.

When Kagerer got the call from her dad, she said, she was so angry she drove to the airport and found two baggage handlers at the curb who recalled helping her dad.

Kagerer said she was directed to a Continental manager, but the manager had a phone to each ear and a radio squawking at her on the counter.

"I really felt for her," Kagerer said. "I thought, 'That's all she needs, some crabby lady who just got out of bed complaining about her fish.' "

Kagerer gave up. Her dad was just getting started. In Seattle, he went to a Continental claims agent.

"Their attitude was, 'This happens all the time; just file a claim. It was pilfered — so what? Just file a claim.' Not that there was a security breach," Bolanos said.

A claims agent later told Bolanos over the phone that he had signed a waiver for his fish. Bolanos was incredulous.

"We'd signed a waiver for loss or spoilage," he said. "Not for disappearage!"

A fish theft is unusual, said Brenee Davis, Continental's Anchorage general manager. Davis said there probably are 30 to 40 boxes of fish on every Continental flight leaving Alaska in summer, and she has never heard of any getting stolen.

"Usually when you hear about theft, it's electronic goods — cellphones ... things like that," she said.

"Never fish."

Seattle Times staff reporter Alyson Beery contributed to this story.