The Boarding Pass

Last year I received a random message from a Facebook friend. His name is Jim. He is a friend from middle school and high school. Jim is now a contractor who specializes in kitchen remodels.

The message read “Did you lose an airline ticket? I just found it.”
He included a photo of an old fashioned looking boarding pass.
The boarding pass info:
Pan American Airlines
Passenger: Colleen Dymond
Departing: JFK International Airport
Arriving: Beijing Capital International Airport, China
Date of flight: December 3, 1973

I didn’t know Jim enough to have his cell number. So I replied to him. “I am so confused. Can you call me? 845-399-****

Jim called me pretty much right away. He explained that he is remodeling a kitchen. He just blew out one of the walls and found this behind it.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the people who now own my childhood home are remodeling their kitchen and this was in the wall ……

Here is the problem.
I would have been 3 years old at the time of this boarding pass being purchased.
I’ve never been to Beijing.
No one in my family has ever been to Beijing.
My parents (who are now deceased) had never even been on an airplane.
I’ve never owned a passport or traveled outside of the U.S. until 2019.
And this was found in our wall !!
What ???!!!!!!!

Jim stopped by my job at the YMCA when he took a lunch break and gave me the airline ticket.

The ticket is exactly as you would imagine it would look. It is rectangular shaped. It has the “Pan Am” logo in the upper left corner.. It has a very dingy color with old stains on it. The stain is round like a can or a glass left it there. It has the perforations on the right side of it so it can be torn when boarding the airplane.

The first thing I did was text my siblings. I texted the photo and explained the situation. They were all confused and curious. They have no idea how this even exists and why it exists.

I started to get a little freaked out.

I started to make a list of people who could give me some answers to this mystery.
Perhaps extended family, neighbors, or old friends could help me.


My memory doesn’t really go back as far as 3 years old.
Yet, I still found myself trying to think if there were any sketchy people hanging around at my house when I was a little kid.

Was I part of some weird adoption? Was someone planning to abduct me? Was someone using my identity? Was this a joke?

I decided to start my research by using common sense. I asked myself “Why would someone secretly purchase an airline ticket for a 3 year old girl?” So, I decided to go down the rabbit hole of a possible attempted abduction.

How was I supposed to research this situation? This dates back way before computers and the internet.

One thought I had regarding any of my immediate family members being affiliated with JFK airport (the departing location) was my father. He was a tractor trailer driver for IBM and delivered the computers down to JFK on a daily basis. That quickly got ruled out. He would never be involved in shady behavior.

I also have a memory of my parents losing my birth certificate and some guy came to our house to help them fill out papers to get a new one for me. But, I have no idea who that was and none of my siblings remember that.

So, then I got thinking about any family friends who visited our house. I literally could only think of all the teenagers who hung out with my older siblings. No way. They wouldn’t have the means to pull any stunts like that.

Next, I thought about how my parents would have neighbors over for breakfast when I was a little kid.. They did this almost every weekend. They always sat around the kitchen table and had crumb cakes, hard rolls, and coffee. There is only one neighbor who came over who is still alive. I contacted her. She was literally dumb founded. She could not think of any ideas or info to help me. This woman is very honest, intelligent and well respected. My gut says she really had no idea.

Suddenly, out of nowhere I remember this one guy who lived the next block over. He took up a friendship with my dad because he always walked past our house. Once or twice a summer he would stop and my dad offered him a beer on our patio. This guy used to talk about the airports all the time. Like the entire conversation was airports and airplanes. His job was a courier who would deliver lost airline luggage to people’s homes. That is probably why he and my dad got along. They had that delivery type of job in common. This guy walked past our house for many years. Then suddenly he didn’t walk by anymore. I remember asking my dad where that guy has been lately. And….

My dad told me that he moved to CHINA !!!!!!

I couldn’t remember his last name for the life of me. His first name was Albert. I asked my siblings. My sister remembered his last name. I had to google and see if I could find him online. He would probably be like 70 years old by now. Maybe older. I could not find him anywhere on social media or by a google search.

Look at me assuming I know that this really was an attempted abduction. This is such a strong assumption on my end. I am such a sucker for mysteries. So suspect #1 was Albert.

I kept plugging along….

I started really thinking about who could see inside our home without physically being inside.
Also, I asked myself how would this person eventually get in my house with an airline ticket?

Just for fun I started picturing in my mind where the airline ticket was found. I was picturing the layout of my old kitchen. I thought about the windows in our kitchen. The house directly next door was extremely close to ours. But I couldn’t think of anyone who I recalled living in that house who would be suspicious. Of course, I have no idea who lived there when I was 3 years old. I can only think of the people from when I actually had a memory of my childhood.

The houses are so close together that you could have a normal chat with someone from window to window. I recall back in the 90s my nephew met a friend who lived in the upstairs apartment of that house and they would have normal conversations from the kitchen window up to his friend’s bedroom window in the house next door.

I think it is also important to note that our family never locked our doors to our house. I remember when my mom passed away. We had to go through a jar of old keys and test them in the doors to see if any of them worked. (Was that just us ? Or was that common back in the day? )

I started doing research online. I assumed I would not have any luck finding any info from 1973. I did end up finding a website. (I had to pay money to access it)..I basically was able to find out the names of everyone who lived at that address for the house next door to me. It dates back to the 1960s.

The website gave me a name of a man who lived in that house from July of 1972 to December of 1973. His name was Leonard Walker. Leonard lived in the upstairs apartment. Apartment B.

After that, I did a normal google search for Leonard’s name and didn’t come up with anything at all.

So, then I spent more money. I paid for a newspaper website that has all archived copies of most newspapers in the United States.

All I had to do was search for the name on that website and BINGO !
I found something.

It was true !! My suspicion was right !! I strongly believe I was part of an attempted child abduction.
I found an article in the New York Times that had a story from January of 1974. Leonard was part of a child trafficking sting. Caught at Kennedy Airport. The article said that he was trying to take a young child onto an airplane and was stopped just in time by the FBI. The article was vaguely written and not a front page story. Which is shocking. But, I found it and couldn’t believe it !

So it was our next door neighbor – Leonard !
WOW !!!

My family totally freaked out when I told them about Leonard !

And poor, old Albert. He was trying to be a nice neighborhood drinking buddy and I suspected him. 🙂

It is also extremely disturbing to think that a stranger was lurking in our home and we never knew it !

This is a fictional story that was inspired by a TRUE story I had seen online. Click this link. https://www.tiktok.com/@k3llynb/video/6915915817003568390?lang=en