Agent 003 (I chose that number cuz I have 3 kids, that's why)

On Tuesday, June 3rd, we were scheduled to fly out of Venezuela and head back to the States...Williamsburg was our final destination where the kids and I will be hanging out at my parent's home until Kris joins us.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:15am. We left Caracas at 7am, got to the airport just after 8am. Kris said goodbye to the boys and I before we went through the security checkpoints. He told me to be sure and call him if there were any problems. We made it through security and immigration by 9:30 with enough time to relax for a bit.

The boys and I stopped at a little snack spot, ordered 3 empanadas (they call them something else in Venezuela but I can't remember what...but they are just like empanadas), some juice and sat there until it got closer to our boarding time. At 10:15 we made our way to the gate and waited for the boarding announcement. Once it came, the kids and I made our way down this hallway that would then take us to the jet way. Halfway through this hallway, a security guard walked up beside me and said in English "You must be Mrs. Line! Hi, we have run into a little problem with your luggage. The National Guard would like you to come onto the tarmac while they inspect your luggage" I replied with "OK, well, how I get onto the tarmac? Do you want us to just follow you or do we need to wait somewhere?" He said "well that's another problem, your children are not allowed on the tarmac. They will have to wait up here"

I looked out the window and saw that every piece of my luggage (we had 13 suitcases) was spread out next to the plane with National Guardsmen standing next to it. No one else’s luggage was there. I got this very sick feeling at the pit of my stomach, like something was very wrong. I looked at Weston and Braedon who were also looking out the window and they had looks on their faces I couldn't quite read. I turned to the man and asked "how long is this going to take?" He said "oh probably about 45 minutes or a little over an hour".

I am sorry, I have to admit, something finally snapped, I looked at all of the people standing in line waiting to board and they were listening to the exchange. I asked him "So this is going to delay this whole flight a possible hour and a half?" I looked at my kids as he answered "yes". I looked around as a woman approached me and said "I know you don't know me and I'm a stranger but I will sit here with your kids if you need to go do this". I looked at her and thanked her but told her it wouldn't be necessary. I wasn't going to be leaving my kids alone with strangers. She walked down the jet way and I saw her speaking to one of the flight attendants.

Another security guard came up to talk to me. I told her "you can go through my luggage; I don't want to leave my kids alone." She said that BRV regulations said that I had to be there while they went through it. I told her that she could have them bring all of the luggage up to me then if I couldn't bring the kids with me down to the tarmac. She said that would not be possible.

Maybe I have been watching too many Hollywood movies or maybe my patience was completely gone but all of a sudden I felt a huge pair of Brass Ones appear...I turned to the male security guard and said very matter of factly, "you know, I'm not going to leave my kids up here alone with strangers. My two older boys are already getting upset. If this was American Airlines requesting this security check then I would gladly comply but since it is the BRV National Guard you can tell them I'm not going down onto the tarmac for them to do this and delay all of these passengers, in fact...." dramatic pause for necessary narration--I noticed several of the passengers paying close attention to what was going on. Here is where the Hollywood movie watching comes in. I thought I'd try and pull the Diplomat card as much as I never wanted to "be that kind of person" who would pull the Diplomat card. Hey, if a Diplomat in Virginia can kill an American by drinking and driving and claim diplomatic immunity AND GET IT (this happened while I was in college there back in the mid '90s) I could certainly try it in this situation. So I looked at him and said "I am a Diplomat, here are our passports to prove it, and I do not want to leave my children with strangers up here while I am on the tarmac for an hour while the National Guard goes through my luggage."

I called Kris, told him what was going on. Some of the passengers got out of the line to come over and stand near me and the kids. I heard a man mention "harassment" to another. I handed my cell phone to the security guard and told him my husband was at the embassy and wanted to speak to him. I guess Kris really chewed him out and told him that the security guard would abide by the diplomatic agreements and leave us alone. As I was standing there with the kids, Braedon was clenching onto my hand, I told him I wasn't going to be going anywhere. By this time two stewardesses came out into the hallway.

When the security guard got off the phone, one of the older women in line yelled over to him in Spanish that they were targeting me and my family and they need to leave us alone. The security guard told me he was going to go speak to his supervisor and handed the phone back to me. I couldn't believe how calm I was. I knew that if I made a scene where I got neurotic or loud they could have reason to pull me off. I kept the kids close to me just so they knew everything was ok. I asked the stewardesses if the kids could get on the plane without me if these guys insisted that I go out on the tarmac. They said they wouldn't be able to and unfortunately they wouldn't be able to stay with the kids out in the hallway.

I spoke to Kris, he was furious. He asked if there was anyone else going through this. I told him I was the only one. He said they were targeting me and knew I was a Diplomat after seeing my passport back at the security checkpoint and I told him some of the other passengers said the same thing. He had the RSO (Regional Security Officer) on the other line who was telling him "don't worry; it's just a random search". Kris was convinced they were targeting me specifically and I agreed.

I told him I'd call him back. As we waited for the security guard to return I apologized to the other passengers who were waiting there with me. They said they just wanted to make sure I was ok. When the security guard came back that older woman started yelling at him in Spanish "Can't you see she's alone with 3 kids? Are you so stupid that you have to pick on her? You are going to delay all of us because the National Guard wants to harass this woman and her children? She's a Diplomat; you have to leave her alone!" The security guard waited for another security guard to come up and this new guard told me that I could go ahead and get on the plane.

The stewardesses helped me with the boys, they were so good at trying to calm the boys down and get their minds on other things. I asked them how often that happens and they told me they will target one person and delay the whole flight just to go through their luggage. They told me they couldn't believe how well I handled that. I told them it was just the rancid icing on the stale cake that was our experience in Caracas already, but I'm not surprised, if they wanted to go through my luggage then fine but don't make my kids sit with strangers.

Ok, so this isn't over. We get to Williamsburg at midnight. We are so tired and just collapse in bed. The next morning I start unpacking the suitcases. I notice one suitcase is unlocked...I could have sworn I locked every single suitcase....I open it up and the lock is there, it has been cut. I notice a huge hole has been left in the middle of where I had packed things. They took every single one of my data CDs and my thumb drives, but they left all of the blank CDs that were still sealed...hmmmm, yea I thought this was strange too.... At first I was sick to my stomach because those 50+ CDs contained scanned and archived family slides that I had been working on, digitally restoring those that were even older than I am. I was sick because I was an idiot for putting them in my luggage rather than mailing them (but then again, I was afraid to mail them in the event they got lost...).

I just finally shrugged my shoulders and called Kris with the news.
He got off the phone with me and e-mailed the RSO with the news that they seized all of the computer media. The RSO called him back first thing...all of a sudden he was interested and it was no longer a random search in his eyes either. Not that I will ever get any of those disks back but it meant something to be taken seriously rather than just being blown off by embassy people.

All day I was sick to my stomach about all of those disks and the hours of work I put in on them. I woke up at 2am nearly screaming with joy! I have Carbonite on my computer!!!!! Everything that was on my hard drive was backed up on Carbonite before I transferred them to disk! I had removed those 632 scanned slides to make room on the hard drive for a couple of computer programs since the original scanned slides were saved in .tiff format (meaning huge files) until I restored them and saved them to .jpeg format (smaller files). Carbonite is an online backup service my favorite radio talk show host, Glenn Beck, always talks about and before we left the States I had installed it on my laptop. It works very discreetly which is why I completely forgot I had it! I went online right then and checked and sure enough....everything on those disks was on the backup database! Carbonite is the best $50 I have ever spent!

So now I'm laughing and hoping those idiots are really enjoying all of those pictures. I wish I was there with them so I could narrate over their shoulders and make sure they look at EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! I'd give them the supper-long-senile-old-woman-extended-version of each slide's story. So maybe they thought I was a spy…or smuggling out top secret Arepas and Cachapas recipes…too bad they didn’t check Jamison’s diaper, they would have found “the” flash drive…The name’s Line, Garity Line…

I remember another quotable quote from Caracas:
As we were talking about going to another overseas post after Caracas
Kris: "I just don't want to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire"
Garity: "Honey, we are in the fire...it's time to jump into the frying pan"