Blimey! Your Passport's Been Stolen! Now What?

By Cindy Loose
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 4, 2006

An American tourist arrives in London on an overnight flight, often on a first trip abroad, and excitement masks his exhaustion. So, after checking in at his hotel, he hits the streets. After many turns, he realizes he's lost. And he can't remember the name of his hotel.

He ends up at the U.S. Embassy.

"Happens all the time," says John Caulfield, the embassy's consul general. The response to the hapless tourist is just another service provided to American citizens on a routine day in the life of what is, outside of Canada, the busiest U.S. embassy in the world.

The building on Grosvenor Square in central London is boxy, an ugly example of a nondescript, modern architectural style. But just inside the lobby doors, you remember what a prestigious posting this is when viewing the paintings of previous ambassadors to the Court of St. James's: John Adams, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan. About a thousand Americans a day stream through the embassy -- a mini-American city that publishes a daily handout of breaking news from the States, houses an Internal Revenue Service office and employs 300 Americans and 600 Brits.

By 9 a.m., a ragged line a block long has formed of foreigners seeking work visas. Americans have a separate entrance and gain quicker access. Their waiting room looks a bit like a pediatrician's office during cold and flu season, given all the babies in car seats and prams. (On a given day, dozens of American parents living in the United Kingdom come here to register their children as Americans -- 6,000 babies last year.)

Half a dozen American Foreign Service officers sit at windows similar to those at the DMV, except that these workers are trained diplomats, so they're nicer.

There's a bit of an assembly-line quality to the work at the window, but behind the scenes, all sorts of human dramas are playing out. Liz, a longtime British employee of the embassy who requested that her last name not be used for security reasons, says she has seen "every type of problem you can imagine." Her first piece of advice to travelers: "If you fall in love online, come for a vacation to meet the person before quitting your job and selling all your worldly goods."

Stolen Belongings

First up at vice consul Richard Swart's window is a family of four who are among the quarter-million Americans living in the United Kingdom. The parents want to renew passports for their teenagers -- a boy and a girl with such pronounced British accents that you have to assume their connections to their homeland are pretty thin.

Swart's next customer has a familiar problem: a snatched purse in a pub. Happens nearly every day, officials say. Invariably, if there's a husband involved in the case, he's put his passport and other valuables into his wife's purse, so that when it turns up missing from the back of her chair, both of them are out of cash, credit cards and proof of identity. A traveler's tip from Caulfield: Don't let one person carry all the valuables.

Then comes Clem Ferris, a missionary from Chapel Hill, N.C., who tells Swart he was in Oxfordshire for a convention and that while he was having lunch at a pub, thieves broke into his host's car and stole his briefcase.

A little more than an hour after his arrival, Ferris walks out with a new passport. "It was quicker than checking in at Heathrow and quicker than getting a license at the [department of] motor vehicles," he says.

(A little secret: As long as you're near an embassy on a weekday, losing your passport isn't as big a deal as you might imagine. Thanks to digital photographs and online records, an embassy official can call up your file and reissue your passport in about 15 minutes. The replacement costs $97 and is good for only a year, but can be exchanged at no charge for a regular 10-year passport.)

Swart calls forward an American couple with a 2-month-old and certifies the baby as an American, then does the same for a Nigerian couple who happened to be visiting the United States when their baby was born.

Next up: Beth and Carl Huntingdon of San Francisco, who were vacationing in London with their 8-year-old daughter and planning to head to Rome the next day -- until they noticed that while their passports were good for another five years, their daughter's had expired the previous day.

Swart puts the application in order. "Kids often get overlooked," he says, since the passports of children under 16 are good for only five years, while their parents' are good for 10.

When Love Goes Bad

The Internet has created a spate of problems for embassy employees. Internet romances between the United States and Britain are booming, says British employee Liz. The person at one end of the connection is taking a chance on love, and sometimes the person on the other end is a fraud.

"Virtually every day we get calls -- 'I sent money for the security deposit on our new apartment and am at the airport, where are they?' " says Liz. Sometimes an American woman hoping to surprise her U.K. "fiance" will knock on the door of his house and a wife will answer.

"It's sad; they believe what they want to believe. A couple weeks ago, I got three or four cases in just one week," Liz says. Never send money, she advises, and "at a minimum, talk to them on the phone before you come."

Liz's British colleague John, a consular assistant, adds that he's never met an American who actually inherited funds from British relatives they didn't know they had, nor an American who'd won a lottery they didn't know they'd entered. But he has dealt repeatedly with Americans who emptied their bank accounts and sent their "earnest money" to an Internet contact before arriving in London, destitute, their expectations of riches dashed.

Liz says she gets three or four phone calls a day from Americans claiming they are destitute and need to get back home. Liz's next piece of advice: "If you want to extend your stay, check first with the airlines to see if the ticket is changeable. Don't assume you can come along to the embassy and we'll repatriate you."

She says she solves most of those problems by requiring that the destitute provide three contacts; usually, one of the three people called will come up with the fare home.

More difficult are those Americans who don't want to go home, but should.

"If a mentally ill person has a passport, it's just as easy for them these days to hop on a plane as on a city bus," says Liz. "The U.K. has good provisions for compulsory detention for evaluation for those who are seriously mentally ill. The problem is those who are mad, but not mad enough to be certified. The staff spends hours talking to them, convincing them to contact relatives," she says.

Those who have been hospitalized, once they are deemed stable, will be escorted home by a nurse or social worker; the cost can be part of a "repatriation loan." The embassy arranges for a representative from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to meet the person at the other end.

Repatriation loans are a last resort: Last year, U.S. embassies around the world issued only 868. Repayment is the norm; passports are invalid for further travel until the loans are satisfied.

Often, say embassy staffers, the calls for help come from the States. Caulfield describes a typical call: "My son is traveling in Europe. He's visiting a few countries, I'm not sure which ones, and I haven't heard from him in weeks. Can you find him?"

Make our lives and yours easier, Caulfield advises travelers: Leave an itinerary back home and register with the embassy by filling out a form at http://www.travel.state.gov/ .

Emergency Support

The office seems busy now, but when disaster strikes, it turns hectic. When four suicide bombers attacked the London transportation system last July, killing 52 people, the embassy got thousands of calls from the United States. After sorting out the irrelevant, embassy personnel investigated 1,000 calls about people who were or might have been in London at the time of the bombing. "We resolved 95 percent within three days," says Caulfield. In three cases, the news delivered was bad: One American was killed, two seriously wounded.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hundreds of Americans were stranded at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports. The embassy set up an around-the-clock command center and dispatched officers to the airports, to help people find accommodations and get in touch with family members. It also fielded hundreds of calls from British citizens offering beds in London or help in the rescue efforts in New York.

Dealing with tragedy is part of the job here. A big problem at this particular post: pedestrians walking into oncoming traffic after forgetting that the British drive on the left. When an American dies abroad, the embassy works with the next of kin to document the death and get the body sent back home, which generally costs at least $3,500. Often, the biggest challenge is finding the next of kin. More advice from Liz: Fill in the "emergency contact" section of your passport.

Injuries to Americans abroad are often complicated by the problems they have paying for the treatment. About 90 percent of Brits who travel overseas buy travel insurance, but it seems that very few Americans do, says Liz. "Please get it," she pleads, adding that despite the beliefs of many elderly Americans, Medicare doesn't count in a foreign country.

John offers another word of caution: As the airlines say, never carry anything for anyone. Of the 110 American prisoners in U.K. jails, most are there for drug smuggling, and some because they were gullible and accepted a free vacation in London to carry what they were told was something like "Aunt Tilly's ashes." If you are arrested abroad, an embassy official will visit you within 48 hours, but don't expect him or her to come up with bail money, pay for an attorney or order that you be sent home.

If you're a law-abiding citizen who just happens to wander off and forget where you're staying, however, American embassy personnel are there to help.

They can get you on the Internet to see if you have a hotel confirmation in your e-mail account or a bill from the hotel on your credit card statement. They'll ask if you're sure you didn't mention where you were staying to someone back home. Did you use a travel agent? Did you pick up matches from the hotel desk? Remember any signs or landmarks near the hotel?

If those memory jogs fail, an embassy official might walk you through neighborhoods with lots of hotels that are popular with visitors. In a pinch, they've even called in a British bobby to drive confused, elderly Americans around the city, looking for something that might seem familiar.

It's not exactly a right of citizenship, but it is an American service to citizens abroad.