Purse-suit

As the bus pulled away from Seoul Station, Chrissy realized immediately that she didn’t have her purse. Our bags were piled up on a narrow sidewalk they called a bus stop. The bus stop was in the middle of the street. Two lanes of traffic headed south and two headed north with two lanes for buses in between. We stood under a little roofed bus stop as a couple of drops of rain fell. She began to flag the bus down, but it was already merging into traffic as it headed to the next stop at city hall. We picked up our bags and crossed the road. At first we weren’t sure that we would catch a cab, but one dropped four people off almost immediately. We flagged him down.

The cab driver didn’t get out of the car to help me with the bags. I loaded several into the trunk, two large backpacks into the passenger seat and joined Chrissy in the back seat as she tried to replay the afternoon’s events and place the last time she saw her purse. We showed the map to our hotel to the cab driver. He seemed to understand and drove off in the right direction. I turned my attention to Chrissy and tried to help her remember where she may have left the purse.

I saw the driver make the first right hand turn. Our hotel was then on the left, a turn he never made. He took us on a trip. The trip that should have been five minutes in heavy traffic took us through Seoul for nearly an hour. The fifty minutes or so we spent in the cab only increased our frustration. Minutes were ticking away along with the chance to find the purse. Eventually, he dropped us at the hotel. Chrissy immediately went in to the hotel to check in and begin the search for her purse, while I wrangled the bags onto a baggage cart and joined her at the hotel desk.

She had described the purse to the desk worker who spoke English the best, while a second desk worker called the airport. The last time she remembered having the purse was in the airport restroom. Between Chrissy, the person she spoke with, the person on the phone speaking with the people at the airport and the people at the airport there was confusion. It wasn’t at all clear that the message made it to the right people that her purse was lost, or that it would ever make it back to us.

Chrissy was determined to find it. At first, I didn’t hold out much hope, but looking at Chrissy’s distress, I was determined to find it no matter how long it took. We decided to return to the airport. Back at the airport she went through the restroom. She found nothing. She went through the trash bags in the bathroom with a set of tongs left there. Again she found no evidence of her purse.

We went to the information desk and were directed to the police station and lost and found office. The lost and found had no bags turned in. So we made a police report. We returned to the first floor restroom for one last look through. A different lady at the information desk saw us walk by. She called us over. Her English was very limited, but we understood that she wanted us to wait for a minute. She called over a cleaning woman. The cleaning woman took us back to the restroom where two other cleaning women stood talking. The three of them talked quickly with each other. Nothing! They knew what we were looking for, but none of them had seen anything. We began to think the worst. Maybe someone found the purse and simply walked away with it.

We spent nearly two hours in the airport looking and talking to people about the purse to no avail, but not for lack of helpfulness. We clearly got the impression of true concern and desire to help us from everyone we encountered.

We had only the bus to check on our way back to the hotel. The bus stop was very busy. Several people sat on the benches waiting for their bus. I walked up to a flight attendant and asked her if she spoke English. She did and did so very well. I quickly explained to her what we were looking for and asked her to ask one of the bus stop attendants if they had any information about a lost purse. She asked quickly, but her bus pulled up and it was obvious she would need to leave. She appeared to want to stay to help us, but she also needed to leave. In her last moments, she asked the bus stop attendant where we could go for help. She then told us to go back into the airport; there was an Airport Limousine desk. They would be able to help us. We thanked her and she left.

We went to the desk for help. The lady behind the counter listened for a moment, asked which bus and time we were on it, picked up her radio and called the bus we were on. A response came back in Korean, the man standing next to the lady helping us looked at Chrissy and said, “Good News!”

We heard a Korean version of the name “Christina Thornton” come over the radio. He had her purse. Within moments, the lady behind the desk told us that they indeed had the purse and that it would be back at the airport in about an hour and a half. All we had to do was wait. We both realized, as we had earlier determined, that if we hadn’t returned to the airport we would not have found that purse while we were still in Korea. The only chance was that someone would have tracked us down once we returned to the states. Given the kindness and helpfulness of the Koreans, I don’t doubt that they would have done just that.