The man had looked desperate. She had watched the tears well in his eyes as he pleaded with the authorities. They were cold and indifferent to the pain that was written all over his face. Finally, he resigned. He walked over to the trash bin and dropped it inside. After witnessing the whole ordeal from the sidelines, she couldn’t help herself. But when she realized what was in the box that the man had thrown away, she started crying too......READ THE FULL STORY>>.....READ THE FULL STORY>>
When Eliza Hernandez, a Tampa, Florida resident, arrived at St. Petersburg Clearwater Airpod that day with her boyfriend, she hadn’t been expecting to witness anything out of the ordinary. She was headed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her boyfriend agreed to stay with her until she had to board her flight. But while they were standing in the security line, there was a commotion up ahead.
Eureka Banks waited patiently by Alicia’s side as the TSA conducted bag inspections, but something was taking longer than usual. There appeared to be a problem. A middle-aged man was trying to take a wrapped package through the metal detector, and it was holding up the whole line. Little did Hernandez know, she was already involved, whether she wanted to be or not.
The security guards pulled the man from the line and began to question him. Hernandez and her boyfriend couldn’t help but overhear snippets of the argument that ensued. The problem was something inside the man’s carry-on bag, and the guards were refusing to let him pass through. The situation was growing tense by the minute.
What was the problem? After the events of September 11 rocked the world, the TSA in the United States began a clampdown on what is and what isn’t allowed to be in a handbag on flights. Passengers are routinely stopped, pulled out of line, and questionable items are destroyed or disposed of. Of course, both Americans and tourists alike often become angry when they hear that innocuous items like toothpaste need to be thrown away. But what this man had was nothing like that.
Hernandez and Rico watched the argument between the guards and the man intensify in front of them, but still, the man refused to part with his parcel, and he was becoming visibly distressed. He begged and pleaded, but the guards wouldn’t budge. Seeing that his pleas were falling on deaf ears, the man tried to bargain with them. The man asked if there was any way his package could be sent to the airport’s lost and found, but still, the guards denied him.
They wouldn’t budge. They coldly ordered him to take his package and toss it into the nearest trash bin. That was what brought the man to tears. Hernandez and Rico watched on, appalled. Something had to be done. With his eyes swelling up, the man took the package that the TSA said he wasn’t allowed to bring with him. With a heavy heart, he carefully placed it in the bin with the trash. Then he sadly walked through the checkpoint to board his flight.
The line began to move quickly after that, and it was soon Hernandez’s turn. She said goodbye to her boyfriend, but not before making a very strange request. Hernandez was left with a very bad taste in her mouth after what she had witnessed. She prepared to go to the baggage check and kiss Rico goodbye, but she knew that she had to do something before she boarded her flight to Pennsylvania. She asked her boyfriend to go and check the trash bin near the security line and retrieve the mysterious package. Rico went back to the trash bin and retrieved the man’s package.
Then he left for the airport and drove back to Tampa. Hernandez, meanwhile, couldn’t stop thinking about how badly the TSA had treated the man. But she also desperately wanted to know what was inside the box. As soon as she reached her destination, she scrambled to turn her phone back on and immediately called Rico. Rico had unwrapped the package but was surprised to find that its contents were rather underwhelming. At first glance, the object in question didn’t seem like something that would raise a red flag with airport security.
He lifted the weighty souvenir out of its box and turned it over in his hands. But when he flipped it over, he realized just how valuable it was. What looked like a meaningless trinket was actually something much more. Rico now understood why the man at the airport had teared up when he was made to toss it in the trash. He shook it gently and watched the flurry of glitter swirl around. It was a glass snow globe, and there were two photographs inside.
One photograph was of a little girl, and the other side was a photo of an elderly couple. Underneath the globe was an engraving that read, “We love you, Katie. Nana and Papa. 12/5/16.” When Hernandez heard what was in the mysterious package, she began to tear up too. But she knew exactly what she had to do. When Hernandez came back from her trip, she had already decided that she wasn’t just going to discard the snow globe.
It had clearly meant so much to the man who had been forced to part with it. So Hernandez came up with a plan. She knew that tracking down the family wouldn’t be easy, but they had to try. They had nothing to go on except that the man had been at St. Petersburg Clearwater Airpod that day. Hernandez decided to take to social media to try and find the family. She posted pictures of the snow globe and begged all her friends to share them as far and wide. But Hernandez never imagined that the post would quickly take a life of its own.
