Luggage Thieves

Kindly alert your readers to the latest trick in luggage ransacking in Latin American airports.

On a recent return flight from Uruguay, I had a nearly four-hour nighttime layover in Sao Paulo, Brazil. When I got home, I discovered that my checked suitcase had been opened, not by prying open the lock that closed the zipper but by twisting that lock until it broke off the zipper-pulls.

I have since learned that the airport will wrap luggage in plastic to protect it from thieves for $6 per suitcase. I doubt, of course, that even a plastic wrapper would have deterred a determined thief, but it might have deterred a quick-acting opportunist.

ROSI EDYTHE FLAMM, Thousand Palms