The Case of the Missing Pen

8/3/2019 The Case of the Missing Pen

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DECEMBER 8-14, 2011 | VOLUME 15 | NUMBER 6 BROWARDPALMBEACH.COM I FREE


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Rick Case, who once sold more Hon-das in a month than any other humanbeing, entered the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport

this June. Then a computer determined thelevel of inconvenience he would encounter.

The Smiths 02PN20 metal detector shows a visual read-out each time a passenger walks through, indicating how much

metal hes carrying. If its enough say, a handgun or a belt buckle the display lights up and an alarm sounds, like a high-pitchedringing phone amid the slamming of plastic bins. The passengeris then diverted to a glassed-in compartment for a pat-down.

Some people carrying no metal at all are also selected for ex-tra screening by the machine, at seemingly random times. Its a

numbers game, a shot-in-the-dark statistical fight against thesmall chance of terrorism. By letting the machine make the selec-tions, airport workers are insulated from being accused of hu-man faults like prejudice or spite. A Midwestern grandma is aslikely to get that extra pat-down as a Middle Eastern sheik.

But no machine can be truly random. Any random deci-sion made by a computer is really based on a mathemati-cal formula, an algorithm programmed into its memory byhumans that produces an inconceivably long string of zeroesand ones that ultimately translates into either ayesor ano.

A person walks through and the machine and the random-searchlight is switched on, or not. The decisions made by the machine arenot stupid or smart but inevitable. A computer cannot conceive of aworld in which things happen just by chance, just as it cannot judgesomebody a criminal or an honest, self-made man. >>p8


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Rick Case was scheduled to flyto Denver on Frontier Air-lines flight 387, which departsat 1:35 p.m. from the Fort

Lauderdale-Hollywood InternationalAirport. He was not traveling light.

He entered the center security lanes of theTerminal B TSA checkpoint with his wife,

Rita, a dark-haired woman who met Case at aHonda dealers convention in 1978 when bothof them were building car-dealing empires.She went first, carrying the family cat whileher husband unloaded their baggage onto therollers. Case, wearing a white and black silkshirt and black slacks, took off his shoes andremoved his wallet and keys from his pock-ets. He loaded these items into plastic bins,along with his heavy Montblanc pen: a senti-mental object obtained on a trip to Europe.

His wife removed the cat from its crateand carried it through the magnetom-eter. Case walked through, and the light

flashed: random security check. He wasdirected into a special screening area.What does this extra search involve?

Thats another decision meant to appearrandom, to deter scrutiny by those lookingto game the system. But it too is the resultof a formula: TSA officers conduct differ-ent searches and scans based on the timeof day. The details are secret, following theHomeland Security protocol for SensitiveSecurity Information. Sometime between12:20 and 12:40 p.m., Case was searched.

Meanwhile, the bags were backing upat the end of the x-ray line. People were

streaming through, looking for theirown items. Rita corralled the cat backinto the crate. In a hurry, Case put on hisshoes and gathered his belongings.

He was sitting on the plane whenhe realized he had forgotten his pen.When he landed, he called his 27-year-old daughter, Raquel, who grew upwith her parents in a 6,000-square-foothome on Hillsboro Beach, and askedher to go to the airport and look for it.

In the resulting investigation by theBroward Sheriffs Office, two men wouldtake lie-detector tests, five would sign writ-

ten TSA employee statements, and onewould break down sobbing in a confes-sion. Whether Cases campaign contribu-tions to the sheriff had anything to dowith it, deputies were diligent in trackingdown and charging the accused thief.

We do not know where in Europe the penwas purchased, why it was of such sentimen-tal value to Case, or why he was flying a bud-get airline that day. We do not know whetherhe was visiting family in Boulder or theproperty he owns in Grand Lake, Colorado.He has not agreed to comment for this story.

But when he spoke to BSO deputies threeweeks later, he made a choice. He willed thestory to continue, forever making the pen intoThe Pen. Somebody had taken something im-

portant to him, and even though it had beenreturned to him, he wasnt letting the issue go.

Are you willing to press chargesagainst the person who took it? adeputy asked him over the phone.

Yes, Case replied.

This is Toussain Puddie as a littleboy: The airport is his secondhome. One or twice a week asevening falls, he rides in the pas-

senger seat down the Palisadoes causewayto Norman Manley International, acrossthe harbor from the hills of Kingston, Ja-maica. While his father works the nightshift as an airport firefighter, Toussain goesto sleep among the workers as they cook orplay dominoes. Sometimes he climbs the

tower to meet the air-traffic controllers andwatch jet planes move across the tarmac.

His mother has already moved to Florida.Puddies first ride on an airplane, when heis 9, takes him to live there. He eats currychicken for dinner on the Air Jamaica

evening flight, and before landing, he mar-vels at South Floridas expanse of lights.

This is Toussain Puddie, all grown up:He loves travel, likes wearing a uniform. Hethinks about making it back to an airportas a ticket-counter agent. He interviewsfor a flight-attendant job at Continentalshub in Houston but realizes hes not thetype of man who becomes a flight atten-dant. He works as a concierge at the Tidescondominiums. Another job, for a telecom-

munications company, has him driving soloroutes through Florida and Georgia, as faraway as Charleston, South Carolina, alwayscircling back to his family and his friends.

He takes the TSA job in April 2009. A de-cade earlier, this job would have been doneby a private-sector employee of a firm likeWackenhut or Argenbright. He would nothave received as much training, and he wouldnot have known as much federally protectedinformation. He would not have had under-cover federal agents try to sneak dangerousitems through the security line every oncein a while, just to keep him on his toes.

But post 9/11, he has a very importantjob, with a standard-issue blue uniform anda chrome-faced badge. He works all posi-tions, based on whats needed day-to-day.His favorites are watching the baggagex-ray monitor and conducting bag checks.He thinks hes good at the checks and ef-ficient. He removes the suspicious sectionsfrom bags, runs them back through themachine, sorts out the items. Hes puzzledand amused by the people who bring littleZiploc bags of sand back home from Florida.He makes about $12,000 a year with goodbenefits, working 20 hours a week part-

time, like many of his fellow TSA officers.He makes conversation with passengers

so that they feel more at ease. During foot-ball season, he asks the passengers wearingjerseys about the score. When he sits at thepodium and shines a little ultraviolet light

TWO MEN WOULD

TAKE LI E-DETECTOR

TESTS, FIVE WOULD

SIGN WRITTEN

STATEMENTS, AND

ONE WOULD BREAK

DOWN SOBBING IN

A CONFESSION.

Michele Eve Sandberg/ZUMAPRESS.com

Rita and Rick Case were travelingto Colorado when he lost his Mont-blanc pen at airport security.

The Case of the Missing Pen from p 7

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on passports and drivers licenses, peoplesometimes ask him if he ever smiles. Thenhe smiles, which he does a lot, actually,and thinks, Man, thats not me at all.

This is Toussain Puddie as an accusedfelon: He looks meaner in his mug shot thanhe does in person, broader, with an unshornbeard and v-neck jail scrubs. Thirty years oldand six feet tall, he is the defendant who isemployed by the Transportation Security Ad-ministration in the capacity of a screener.

At the Aventura Mall, ten min-utes in traffic from the housewith painted-on shutterswhere Puddie grew up, a well-

suited clerk with silvered hair pulls apen out of a glass case. Wearing gloves,he rests it in a box lined with velvet.

This isnt The Pen that Rick Case got inEurope, but its the same model, introducedin 2007 and put together by hand at theMontblanc factory in the suburbs of Ham-burg: the Starwalker Metal Rubber, ModelNo. 08857. Its heavy in the palm, balancingout across the fingers. The surface is hard and

rubberized for grip, appearing graphite-grayin some lights and black in others. Its dividedby intersecting lines of inset chrome. The bar-rel bulges out like a bullet point where the fin-gers grasp it; the silver clip curves assertively.

At the top of the pen is a clear poly-carbonate dome, with a six-peaked star the Montblanc logo, representing thenamesake mountains six glaciers float-ing inside, suspended. Inside the penstightly threaded casing is a disposableballpoint ink barrel, braced by a spring.Fountain-tip models are available, but thisone, like Cases, is a standard twist-out.

Cases daughter told authorities that thepen was worth $450. Later, on the phonewith police, Case recalled that he had boughtit in Europe, where it cost about 300 euros.Ira Magsil, the loss prevention manager forMontblanc North America, said in a swornstatement that the pens retail value is $470and would only go up over the years.

So this is the item that rolled around inthe bottom of a plastic tub for a few minuteson June 5, before supervisor Silvano Legerfound it and handed it to lead officer Theo

Vaca so he could announce its presenceover the public-address system. Vaca made

the announcement, which Case evidentlydid not hear down by the gate, and put thepen back into a plastic bowl for lost items.

Shortly afterward, Puddie arrived forhis part-time afternoon shift, parking atthe top floor of the rental-car garage andtaking the elevated walkway to the check-point. Already in uniform, he signed inon the clipboard near the office, checkedhis assignment for the day, and passedthe next five hours without incident.

Five minutes before 6 oclock,

Toussain Puddie confessed totaking the pen and now facesa grand theft charge.

Candace West

The MontblancStarwalker, modelNo. 08857.

Courtesy Montblanc

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Puddie went to see his supervisor in the officefor clearance to end his shift. Then he wentto the sharp-objects cabinet, just outside theoffice door, next to the flagpole. On top of itwas the sign-out clipboard and The Pen.

He picked it up, feeling its weight inhis hands, which are large and will dwarfthe common throwaway Bic. It wasnt

unusual for an officer to grab a writ-ing implement and keep it with him,and usually nobody noticed. Usually thepens didnt cost more than a few cents.Puddie wrote the time on the sign-outsheet: 1800 in deep-blue numerals.

Then he twisted the pen closed and put itinto his shirt pocket, right under his badge.

The Broward Sheriffs Officehas put significant time andmanpower into the case ofCases pen. After Raquel Case

reported the loss to the BSO office at the

airport, Det. Robert Lerner called her tohear the facts again. He obtained cop-ies of written statements from five TSAemployees (not including Puddie) aboutwhere and when they had seen the pen.

On June 14, nine days after the disap-pearance, a deputy interrogated Vaca, theofficer who had first announced the penover the intercom. He pressed Vaca to saythat he had taken it. We need to get the penback, he said. There is a lot of sentimentalvalue to this pen. The guy who owns it couldprobably buy a thousand of these pens, OK,

but there is a lot of sentimental value.I dont have it, sir, said Vaca,laughing incredulously.

Case and his family have contributedthousands of dollars to local and nationalpolitical candidates, both Democratic andRepublican including a hefty sum towardthe campaign funds of Broward Sheriff AlLamberti. Rick and Rita case and their twochildren, Ryan and Raquel, each donateda maximum $500 to Lamberti in both theprimary and the general-election cam-paigns in 2008. Employees of Rick CaseAutomotive Group donated even more,

giving at least $10,500 to Lambertis 2008campaigns. Lambertis 2012 reelection cam-paign has not yet filed any finance reports.

In June 2009, the sheriffs office helda news conference to show off its new,two-seat, European-made Smart cars,acquired for workers to zip around theFort Lauderdale airport. The cars werepurchased from Cases dealership.

At the time, Case chased off hints thatthe car purchase might be payback for hispolitical contribution. He toldNew Times that he had met Lamberti at a fundraiserand that when the sheriff mentioned hewas looking for small, efficient cars to useat the airport and port, I said, You re-ally ought to look at a Smart car. Hisown dealership in Weston was one of thefirst Smart dealers in South Florida.

At the time, Lamberti refused to an-swer questions about the deal with Caseand declined to respond to criticismthat other, non-Honda cars would havebeen cheaper, more fuel efficient, andeasier to maintain than the Smart cars.

Case has also made many philan-

thropic contributions, hosting a fund-raiser for Women in Distress of BrowardCounty and giving away bicycles tochildren in need. He also has providedsome quasi-governmental help.

In 2004, Case approached BrowardClerk of Courts Howard Forman aboutsetting up a satellite clerks office insidehis six-story Davie dealership (which also

houses a barbershop, caf, and voting loca-tions for two precincts). Case agreed tofront the remodeling costs. Now, citizenshead to the dealership to pay for trafficcitations, get their licenses reinstated, andeven get married at the on-site chapel.

Forman dismisses any suggestion thatCases offer was meant to gain political influ-ence and says that the businessman, withhis record of generosity, was simply tryingto do a good thing for the community.

Vaca, the TSA officer who announcedthe pen over the intercom, was brought infor a polygraph test a week after his ques-

tioning. He said he did not take the pen,and passed. The following day, AndrewAmato, an officer who started work at 1p.m. on the day of Cases flight, along withPuddie, also passed a polygraph test.

An hour later, deputies identified Pud-die as the man putting The Pen into hisshirt pocket on surveillance videotape.Puddie was working his usual shift thatday Wednesday, June 22 when he wastold to report to the BSO office in Termi-nal 2. He walked downstairs, along thesidewalk that borders the arrivals road-way, and into the office. A detective told

him to take a seat and lectured him aboutthe difference between accidentally tak-ing something and knowingly stealing.

The detectives showed him a picture ofthe pen. Puddie realized why he was thereand what he had done. He never thoughtthe investigation would come this far,and the weeks since the incident had onlymagnified the damage. He told the detec-tives that the pen was in his apartment.

They drove him home immediately in theback of a detectives unmarked car. When

they got to his girlfriends home at the Islesin Plantation, he asked the detectives if theycould let him go in alone, because he didntwant his girlfriend to know what was go-ing on. They obliged, waiting outside.

Youre home early! called Pud-dies girlfriend from another room.

Yeah, I just had to come get something,Puddie called, looking around for the pen.

Ive got to rush back to work. He left with-out seeing her and handed over the pen.During the drive back to the airport

BSO office, he thought he heard one ofthe officers say to the other, Great job.

Did that pen belong to youwhen you took it?

No, it did not.Do you know

who it belonged to?No.During the course of the day that you

were working... did anybody ask about a pen?

No, nobody. Puddie, who had justsigned away his Fifth Amendment rightsin a bout of obedience, began to cry.

What happened on the follow-ing day? What did they say?

Somebody just said that... if youfind somebodys property, to bring itto the office, because somebody lost apen the day before, sniffed Puddie.

At that point when they madethe announcement, did you realizethat you... in fact, had that pen?

Yeah. I had the pen.OK, and why did you not re-

turn it at that time?I was scared.Have you ever done any-

thing like this before?No.Can you tell me why you did this?I dont know. The pen is a, the

pen is, the pen is a g , nice pen.Puddie had to take off his blue TSA shirt

before deputies led him, handcuffed inback, to the police car, then did that cop-show thing where they pushed down his

head to help him get into the back seat. Ajudge let him out of jail the next morning toawait prosecution. The charge: grand theft,which can be levied in Florida for values aslow as $300.

TSA officers inconvenience ev-erybody. They dont know you,what youve accomplished, whoyou love, the things you say when

you get drunk. They dont know whetheryoure terrified of flying, where youre go-ing, how you made your money, how youspend it. They are nameless with nametags,

faceless with unsmiling faces, scanningyour baggage and touching your thighs.

If youre wearing jeans and a businessshirt, carrying a laptop and some shavingsupplies, Toussain Puddie could look atyou and know youre probably not travel-ing for long. If youre dressed in a Hawai-ian shirt and a sunburn, you might becarrying bags of Florida sand. If youredressed in a black-and-white silk shirt withblack trousers, with a Montblanc pen?

Puddie had never seen Rick Case untilhe saw his name on the report accusing him

of theft. Then he Googled the name andfound a promotional photo: Rick and Rita intheir dealership shirts, sitting in a convert-ible, flying high over a backdrop of clouds.

Puddie has moved back in with his par-ents until this thing blows over, which itmight not do anytime soon, because hesbeen hesitant to accept the states offer. Hewould need to admit guilt, accept probation-style monitoring for a year, and send a writ-ten apology to Case. After completion ofthat program, he could apply to the courtto have the criminal charge expunged.

He told his lawyer, Leland Garvin, that

he wants to go to trial. At first, it was be-cause he wanted to get his job back. Nowthat hes warming up to the idea that theTSA might never rehire him, its largelybecause he has nothing else to do.

When the State Attorneys Office firstgot the case from the sheriff s office, FelonyDivision Chief Jeff Marcus had his doubts.All this for a lost pen? He gave the file a read-through, though, and when he got to Pud-dies confession that he knowingly kept thepen, he decided the charge was legitimate.

Puddie now spends his days going tojob interviews, organizing nightlife eventswith friends, and reselling Aroma Everfreshair-freshener sachets that he buys whole-sale, 100 at a time, to friends and family. OnSundays, he goes to a Jamaican restaurantto watch football games, eating brown-stewchicken and playing dominoes, just as themen in the airport did when he was young.

He wasnt going to keep the pen. He wasgoing to give it to his father. The TSA prefersblack ink anyway.

[email protected]

Candace West

Defense attorney Leland Garvinmay take Puddies case to trial.

A DECADE EARLIER, THIS

JOB WOULD HAVE BEEN

DONE BY A PRIVATE-

SECTOR EMPLOYEE OF A

FIRM LIKE WACKENHU T

OR ARGENB RIGHT.

The Case of the Missing Pen from p 9

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The Case of the Missing Pen