TSA Airport Screeners Find Each Day Full of Surprises

It's 5:30 a.m. and Flossie Ridley is hitting her stride.

Wearing a government-issue white shirt, dark pants and blue latex gloves, Ridley smiles as she works the crowd, which consists of people filing by one at a time, shoeless and hoping they'll make it through without a sound.

"How are you today?"

"Thank you for sharing."

"Have a great day."

Of the many duties Ridley rotates through each day as an officer for the Transportation Security Administration, this, she says, "is the fun part" - working the walk-through metal detector at a passenger checkpoint at Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport.

"You get to meet people," she said. "You see everything."

Everything and anything is what transportation security officers expect. For instance, mice stowaways in handbags, monkeys or pot-bellied pigs that turn out to be "service animals" for the handicapped. An entire gas-powered lawn mower stuffed into a suitcase. And celebrities, from Heisman trophy winners to country singers.

"Jerry Lewis was wonderful," officer Mary Stevens said.

The one constant: passengers. About 6,000 of them come through this airport on the average day. Enthusiastic mission workers heading to distant lands, stoic business travelers, stressed parents struggling to keep children and schedules in line. Most are pleasant. Some aren't.

"We get a lot of hostility," Ridley says. But it's all worth it. "I love my job."

Ridley, 47, has felt that way since the day almost five years ago when she answered an ad in the newspaper for a new agency designed to make commercial air travel safer. Born in Boley, Ridley moved at age 10 with her family of 11 to Oklahoma City. For more than two decades, she worked in the grocery business or helped manage a warehouse. She married and settled in Midwest City, becoming a widow in 1993 when her husband, Elmer, who painted aircraft at Tinker Air Force Base, died.

'One way I could help'

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ridley recalled, she wanted to do something for her country. But she was too old for the military and had no law enforcement experience.

"This was one way I could help," she said.

Ridley was accepted to become one of more than 40,000 TSA employees. That's why at 3:30 a.m. on this morning, Ridley and about 50 of the more than 150 transportation service officers who work at Will Rogers are gathered in a room on the lower level. It's the beginning of another day in the endless search for things, snakes included, that should never end up on a plane.

Today, the officers spend 30 minutes on required reading - classified TSA reports of field investigations, new standard operating procedures and preparations for upcoming recertification tests. It is part of their four hours per week of training, which even includes building simulated bombs. Soon, the security officers disperse to relieve the previous shift, covering security checkpoints, gates, exits and baggage areas in the bowels of the remodeled airport.

Every transportation security officer seems to have a favorite spot. For Ted Myers, it's working one of the L3s, monstrous CT scan machines that peer through checked baggage.

"I'm not too crazy about dealing with the public," Myers said.

If an L3 detects a suspicious shape, it will "alarm" and show a security officer X-ray images of the luggage, images that can be rotated to give a better look. If that doesn't clear things up, the bag is searched by hand and "sniffed" with a device that checks for residue from explosive components.

Since all security officers rotate among the various positions every 30 minutes, there's something for everyone. First up for Ridley - the exit. Here she sits at a podium to make sure all passenger traffic here is one way - away from arriving planes. Sounds boring. But, Ridley said, this is where reunions happen - "passengers coming out to meet their loved ones."