Passport Panic

Sue and I got our first passports in 2001. We were headed to Italy to see our daughter Linzi who was studying in Florence for her Junior Year in College.

The events of September 11th 2001 were too troubling for her to stay overseas. We still had passports and 500 dollar round trip tickets to Italy so we continued with our plans and had a great time.

Flash forward to this year. Its 2012 our passports had expired. We want to cruise to Hawaii again in January. This will not work without valid passports. Even though Hawaii is indeed one of our states, the rules state that the ship must stop at a non US port before returning to the US. This means that a stop in Ensenada, Mexico is required for a 14 day cruise round trip from Las Angeles.

Our passports had expired last year. So this year in September I started figuring out how to renew our passports.  The government has a a great website for those that meet the easy renewal qualifications. You had to have your booklet, new photos, your check, the form filled out from the computer and 140 dollars to get the renewal book with new numbers and the newest innovation, the passport card. The passport card cannot be used for air travel outside of the US but I figured that it might come in handy as a "leave at the desk" sort of ID that is required in hotels from other countries. It would also facilitate getting another if the booklet were lost or stolen or mutilated.

I dutifully sent off in two separate envelopes the required documentation for both Sue and myself. I loaded each up with a big string of stamps and pitched them into the local post office out slot.

Three weeks later, Sue's passport arrived. In a separate envelop her passport card arrived. Everything was cool. She even got her expired passport returned to her dutifully punched with a hole in it.

The next week I received a form letter with the return of my photos and my application stating that I was not submitting the most current passport I owned and would I please look for and send in the latest passport  with a new form.  No expired passport book arrived, and no return of the check. I really didnt know where to turn to next.  I asked my school teacher buddies over breakfast and they said that even though were were in the midst of an election year, and even though our congressman had resigned, his office still had a local connection and that I should engage them to see what could be done. 

The next week my check was returned to me through one of those letters that the post office sends saying, we are sorry that mail was eaten but here are the contents of the letter that we rescued. I think my bulky passport letter did not hold up in the mail and had sprung apart in the mail its ramparts lining the desk of some person's dead letter file. The sole thread of info that got this returned to me was not the envelope but rather the name and address noted at the top of the check.

So what was I going to do? Was the passport stolen? It already had expired. It certainly was not in my possession to use the easy form again to submit the application through the on line form. In the mean time there was the tick tick tick of the upcoming cruise. They would not let me cruise if i didn't have the passport.

Another week passed as I tried not to think about it. Still something needed to be done to get this to happen.

I went on line and came across A.  Briggs. A. Briggs is a passport facilitation company. You send your stuff to them and they walk it through and answer questions to the people that do the passport work. For large sums of money they can get a passport in 2-4 days. For less money more time. I got started to panic and what they had to say on their website made sense. The situation that I had was a lost or a stolen passport that had expired. Their charge for this is $200. What needed to happen was that you had to present yourself with your paperwork to a local passport collection office, like a post office and they would swear that it was really you applying.  Then they would take over and after you Fed exed the documents, they would look them over, contact you if needed and get you they passports within two weeks, Fed Exed back to you.

So I set about getting the meeting with my local post office administrator. I arrived at the post office with my documentation and there was a note on the door saying that if you wanted a passport conference, you needed to call this number and get an appointment.

I thought... well let see if I can walk into the county courthouse and do it there.  It was where we got the passports the first time.  I was told that they no longer did them and that I would have to go get the post office to do it. 

I went home and called the number.  No luck. No luck for three days in a row. 

So were were again another week closer and still I had no passport.

I check the info from the government website and I noticed that I had to fill out a form and admit that my old expired passport had to be reported as lost or stolen.  They actually wanted to know how it was stolen and what I was doing to secure its recovery. I filled out the the form and noted that the Post office probably had it somewhere between Merced, CA and Philadelphia, PA the center for the Department of State that processes such paperwork along with Homeland Security.

Also included at the website was a little live data base work that allowed you to input your zipcode and would yield a list of places within 50 miles where you could do this passport ID work. I picked up the the first name on the list, presumably the closest, it was the Merced post office. It noted a slightly different number that the one listed on the door. So I gave it a call to make an appointment.  It hooked me up with the post office person in Santa Nella. Santa Nella is a very small town out my Interstate 5, 45 miles away. She gave the real number for the Merced post office. It was the one that I had been calling all along to no avail. This response gave me an idea. Maybe I was trying to be "too convenient for myself. I might have better luck with more rural post office that would have more time to "deal" with my problem.

I gave the post office at Ballico a call.  Ballico is a very small town 14 miles north of here along the route the Santa Fe railroad runs on its way to Modesto and Stockton. It is known locally for its general store a little family run affair that had posted on its outside wall the lettering, Pop's in the cooler, but we aren't sure where mom is. Beside this general store that mostly sells irrigation pipe, is a very small post office with about 150 boxes. 
I called the post master. She answered and asked "When do you want to do it?
I said "I would love to do it today if possible."
She said that she had an opening at 12:30.

I arrived with copies of everything possible. I had the original Colorado birth certificate, my CA drivers license, and a scan of my old passport. She said that she was happy that I was paying her fees and the government fees with a check as she had used her last money order the week before.

By the way, I recommend that you get your passport scanned so that you can have a paper copy of it for future recoveries.  You can save the digital copy on your computer's hard drive.

She looked it all over and had me swear that I wasn't a felon or trying to defraud the fed government. I raised my hand and swore.

I asked for all the copies back and she looked at me rather strangely. She was told that she should keep it all and submit it through her post office and once she had sign it off I was not to get it back. So there goes my Briggs Fed Ex service. The support documents were helpful however.

Two and a half weeks later the passport book arrived at my mailbox, and the next day, the passport card arrived and the birth certificate in a separate envelope. 

I scanned the two passports and added the passport numbers to the required info for the ship. Everything worked out.  We are still 88 days for leaving on the ship. Time to spare!