One day after school, 14-year-old Carolina Bonasolo broke down in tears. She tried to explain, her voice cracking and tears starting to stream down her face. When her mother, Gwyneth Bonasolo, took her upstairs, Carolina said it wasn’t just the dress that was upsetting her. Her late grandmother’s white pearl bracelet was in the bag. She also kept dozens of bare gold coins, including rare lira coins, that her mother gave her to help her connect with her Italian heritage.
She was particularly upset about the bracelet, an irreplaceable symbol of womanhood that her family had lost years earlier.
“It felt like a part of her was with me,” Karolina said.
With little help from the airline, Vance decided to take matters into his own hands. He intended to return to Florence. A week later, after paying roughly $4,000 in travel expenses, he brought all of his belongings, including his jewelry, home with the help of a random email he received from a good Samaritan.
“I thought it was worth the effort to get this gem back,” he said. “If we hadn’t taken that risk, we probably would have been thinking about where it was for a long time. It meant so much to her and to us.”
$1,900 for new clothes for a week
It took about 15 minutes of waiting outside the designated baggage carousel at Florence Airport for the Bonasolo Vance family’s anticipation to turn to panic and eventually frustration.
Their journey took nearly 16 hours to complete, including a layover at London’s Heathrow Airport. Their plan was to go to Naples and Rome and return to Miami International Airport on the same connecting flight.
The details of the trip, including luggage, were decided at least a month in advance. Carolina wore an ocean blue ruffled ball gown in hopes of making a good impression on her celebrity crush, Tom Cruise, who she heard might be attending a gala in Rome. They were planning elaborate costumes, including costumes made with Gwyneth dreamed of taking a family photo at the Trevi Fountain.
It was Vance’s first time booking a trip through a travel agent, and she spent weeks finalizing flight, hotel and itinerary details.
When the family arrived in Florence on June 15, they noticed that their luggage was not on the carousel and began to worry that it was lost. They went to the British Airways office at the airport and were asked to fill out a form. Vance said the family was told the package might arrive within a day, but that prediction was not accurate.
But Vance said the airline could not provide clear updates about the baggage’s whereabouts. After receiving the lost baggage case and reference number, the family’s only hope was to call British Airways and keep checking the airline’s website for updates.
As the days passed, the site showed the same message. “Status: Looking for my bag. As soon as I find this bag, I’ll let you know where it is.”
The family continued their trip as planned, but with the added step of buying a whole new wardrobe. Vance said they spent about $1,900 changing clothes and deciphering the meaning of European sizes for delicate underwear and other clothing.
“Those are things that can be replaced, but they become a big part of your life without you even realizing it,” Gwyneth said.
Vance said she learned through her travel agent that British Airways could reimburse her family for purchases to cover the missing items, but months later she still hasn’t received the money. Vance’s almost daily calls to his carrier only made him more frustrated than before.
In a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday, British Airways said: “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused to our customers due to baggage delays.” The airline said the Bonasolo-Vance family’s luggage was airlifted to Florence the day after it arrived and handed over to a courier.
“Despite our best efforts, due to a change in the customer’s shipping address, the courier is unable to deliver the bag and the bag will be returned to the sorting office where it will be processed and sent to the new location or scheduled to be returned. “Their home address was,” the statement said. “We work directly with customers to resolve complaints as quickly as possible.”
But after the Post received that statement, Vance said he had not yet heard an update from the airline.
Vance abandoned the idea of returning to Florence on American Airlines at the last minute after Carolina broke the news that she had lost her grandmother’s jewelry.
Fourth of July weekend was about a week away, so he took an extra day off work and arranged a four-day trip that cost him about $4,000 in total.
“I had to exhaust all my options before I could really come to terms with losing my luggage and losing something that was basically irreplaceable to my family,” Vance said.
His only lead was an email from Ann Johnson, an unknown woman from Colorado. She was also looking for her own lost bag in Florence.
“Your bag is in the lost baggage area,” she wrote in the first email on June 19, which The Post confirmed. “Go to the lost and found office at the airport, show them the lost baggage claim area, and ask them to come inside and look for it.”
Johnson, an engineering professor at the Air Force Academy. She said she happened to see the Bonasolo-Vance family’s names and flight details on the baggage tag. She found her family’s luggage while searching her unclaimed baggage area for her own bag at Florence Airport. She spent several weeks trying to recover lost luggage for her family and her daughter’s best friend who accompanied her on the vacation.
“I’m going to find this and get it back,” she said. “If I didn’t do it, I would probably still be sleeping in Florence. I fully believe they wouldn’t have gotten there.”
Johnson said she picked out some of the bags she found in the lost baggage area, memorized the email addresses on the tags, and contacted them.
Vance said he initially thought Johnson’s email was a scam. He then decided this was his only lead.
When Vance made the decision to return to Florence, she remembered Johnson’s email.
Immediately he took a nonstop overnight flight from Miami to Rome, then took a train north to Florence. It took him less than a day and a half to find his lost luggage.
He carried his passport and bag information with him, hoping that security would allow him wherever he needed to go.
His first stop was the lost and found area, just behind baggage claim, where dozens of other passengers were lined up ahead of him. Some looked disheveled and irritated while waiting.
Vance said there was only one person on staff and it took three hours to get to the front of the line. Employees reiterated to Vance what British Airways has been saying for weeks. Their luggage was never found and there wasn’t much they could do.
When Mr. Vance insisted that he had seen the luggage in the hangar based on Mr. Johnson’s email, airport crew members suggested that Mr. Johnson take a look himself. They wrote the address on a piece of paper and instructed him to wait outside near the side entrance at the back of the airport.
About 45 minutes later, after passing through a metal detector, they were finally allowed into the hangar. What I saw there was a vast field with luggage strewn about. He described the space as a maze and estimated there were more than 2,000 unclaimed packages inside.
Vance walked around the cluttered baggage area, but by the second lap he was starting to think he might never see these bags again. He felt his nerves rise and his pace intensify.
“With all this work involved, I was worried we’d never know what actually happened to our bags,” he said.
But on his third thorough search for unclaimed luggage, after about four hours of searching, he found his wife’s black suitcase and his stepdaughter’s pink bag standing next to it. He immediately felt a sense of relief and immediately took a photo to send to his family back home.
He sent the same photo to Johnson. Among the many lost bags in her photo, she was able to find a red duffel bag that belonged to her daughter’s best friend. She felt especially guilty that her friend’s luggage was lost. It was my first time in Europe and my bag was full of souvenirs. Eventually, she emailed Vance and told him she was coming back to get it back.
“This is the universe working for us,” she said. “I don’t know if this is good karma coming back to me, but of course I was excited.”
After having lunch with another family member, Gwyneth and Carolina returned home to find out their bag had been found, and when Vance sent them a photo of it, they let out a scream of joy from their seats. I remembered.
When he arrived in Miami, bag in hand, Gwyneth was waiting for him with gifts, including a shirt with the word “Hero” printed on it.