It's one of those horrifying moments that is the staple of nightmares. Your passport goes missing and your international flight is about to leave. That's what happened Thursday when an airline mistakenly switched passports at a Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ticket counter, nearly sinking a graduation cruise for two teenage cousins.
Katie Cardinal and her cousin Kaitlyn were traveling on U.S. Airways with their grandmother, Rosalie.
"We gave her three passports, she gave us three back," said Rosaliel. "We stepped away from the counter about four feet. I looked, and one of the passports was not one of the three of us."
Turns out one of the passports returned belonged to Kay Small, a family friend who was behind the grandmother and her two granddaughters in line. Katie's was missing.
The passport didn't end up back in the luggage. A Port of Seattle police officer sprang into action to help find it, taking Katie to the lost and found and even checking security to see if anybody could have picked it up. No luck.
With the clock ticking for a 2 p.m. flight, Rosalie and Katie headed to the passport office in the downtown Seattle federal building to try and get another one. Katie's mom drove Katie's birth certificate and social security card down from Everett. They filled out pages of paperwork and, within a half-hour, the passport office came through and Katie had a new passport.
But it was too late. The flight was gone.
U.S. Airways stepped up, though, and managed to get the group onto a Lufthansa flight from Sea-Tac to Frankfurt and then onto Barcelona, Spain. That leaves about 90 minutes to clear customs and get to the ship.
U.S. Airways has not responded to requests for comment on what could have gone wrong, but so far the family says nobody at the airline has been able to find it and if it was mistakenly given to another passenger, no one's turned it back in.