Saturday, September 5th
Last night I sat out on a wooden deck at Hola Camp Camino, just outside Santiago de Compostela, with my co-leaders, Andre and Brenda, enjoying the massive salad Andre had prepared for us, filled with lettuce, green beans, steamed broccoli, beets, pumpkin seeds, goat cheese, fresh olives and many other treats.
The three of us were making our final preparations for the arrival of our 13 traveling pilgrims.
I felt happy that this long-awaited day had finally arrived.
It’s true, I’d left my CPAP machine somewhere at the Madrid airport earlier that morning.
My CPAP was at the Madrid airport—somewhere. The AirTag I’d zipped into its case was telling me that it was now 391 miles away, in Terminal 4, lost in the glittering morass I’d frantically searched in the hours leading up to my late morning flight.
But I’d had to give up the search and board the plane without it.
When I disembarked in Santiago and met up with Brenda and Andre, it turns out that ALL of Andre’s luggage had been lost, too. Apparently it had never made it on her plane to Portugal and was still back at her home airport in Colorado.
When you travel, shit like this happens everyday.
As we sat in the warm evening breeze eating the beautiful, healthy salad Andre had lovingly prepared for our dinner, neither of us was sweating about our lost items. In fact, Andre said, “I feel liberated not having any of my stuff. It’s very freeing. At this moment, I’m fine without it.”
Brenda added, “Bad things happen in life. It’s just the way things are. They happen and they’re bad in the moment, and then they’re just something that happened to you. Wouldn’t you rather have something bad happen here on the Camino de Santiago than back at home?”
Personally, I’d have to say yes.
I was with my friends and the sting of the loss was already behind me.
The Search Was On
After dinner, I sat down with my laptop and composed a letter to the lost luggage department at the Madrid airport to let them know my CPAP machine was missing.
As is typical for me, my letter was wildly repetitive: long and wordy, with far too many unnecessary details. The lost luggage department did not need a play-by-play of everything I’d just been through.
At home, whenever I need to write a difficult letter to someone, my wife Karyn is the one who reads it and tells me what to cut. “Laura, you don’t need to say this.” And “You should cut this part.” And inevitably, she’s right.
But Karyn wasn’t with me, so I pasted my overwrought draft into Claude and asked my AI bot to simplify the letter, keeping only the essential information. I asked him to rewrite it in basic language appropriate for someone who read and wrote English as a second (or third—or fourth) language.
Thirty seconds later, Claude spit out a far superior, streamlined version. After a few more quick back-and-forths, where I corrected some of Claude’s inevitable inaccuracies, I had a serviceable letter.
I popped it in an email, addressed it to the email address I’d been given to report missing items. And sent it off.
September 4, 2026
Dear Lost & Found Team,
I lost my CPAP machine somewhere in Terminal 4 on Friday, September 4. I had it with me when I entered the security checkpoint. I am not sure if I lost it at security, or somewhere else in the terminal after that.
I already checked with the security staff in person, at about 10:30 AM that day. They did not have it.
Item details:
- Silver ResMed CPAP machine with a water chamber and a heated coil, inside a black zip-up carrying case
- The case has a name tag with my address (see below)
- There is a working Apple AirTag inside the bag. It currently shows the bag is somewhere in Terminal 4.
When and where:
- Arrived at the airport by shuttle around 8:30 AM
- Went through security shortly after
- Discovered the machine was missing and returned to security around 10:30 AM
- Flew from Madrid to Santiago on Iberia flight IB1135
My contact information:
- Name: Laura Davis
- Email: lauradavis@lauradavis.net
- Phone/WhatsApp: +1-831-818-6875 (email and WhatsApp are best when I am traveling)
Where to reach me now:
I am leading a hiking trip on the Camino de Santiago. Until Tuesday, September 8, I am staying at:
Hola Camp Camino (formerly Villa Sen Vento)
24, 15823 O Pino, A Coruña, Spain
Phone: +34 931 35 85 37
(I am traveling with a group; ask for Brenda Porter’s group if needed.)
After September 8, please reach me by email or WhatsApp only.
Returning the item:
If you find it, I can arrange pickup in a few ways:
- I will pass through Madrid airport again on September 25, when I leave Spain — I could collect it then.
- I could pick it up at Santiago airport that same morning instead.
If neither works, please let me know what delivery options are available.
I am also glad to send you the AirTag location by text if you give me a number to send it to.
Thank you for your help.
Laura Davis
The next time I checked my phone, half an hour later, before bed, I saw that I had gotten a response:
“Dear Laura,
We have in our office your CPAP machine.
Said object will remain in our store reserved to your name for a term not exceeding 30 days, from which it will be sent to the Department of Lost Objects of the City of Madrid where it will remain for 2 years.
According to our security policy is not allowed to carry out any type of shipment, so the objects must be removed from our office by their owners.
If you can’t do it personally you have the option of authorizing someone else or hiring a courier service.
In both cases, we ask an authorization signed by you and a photocopy of the ID or Passport. In addition, the person who removes the object have to present us with his own identity document.
In the authorization it is necessary to include: full name of the authorized or the company of transport, brief description of the object, date of loss, Terminal where it was lost, and be signed.
Best, Olena
Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas
Oficina Objetos Encontrados T. 4-Aena
Terminal 4, Planta 0 de llegadas
Terminal 4, Floor 0 Arrivals
Avda. de la Hispanidad s/n, C.P (28042)
Tel: (0034) 91 7466439
mad.objetosencontrados@aena.es
Horario: De 07:00 a 22:00
Schedule: from 7am to 10pm
Eureka! My CPAP machine had been found. It was safe in the lost luggage office. Now I just had to figure out how to get it back.
In the interim, after posting my account “Travel Disaster” on Facebook, I’d gotten lots of sympathy from readers and friends. Also from some of the students who’d soon be joining us on the Camino. Obviously, some of them had read my distressed post. My favorite responses came from people who said their heart had been pounding while they read my account. That made the writer in me happy; I still knew how to craft a page-turner.
I got all kinds of advice via Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and text. Several people suggested that I rent a CPAP machine in Madrid or Santiago so I’d have one to use during our pilgrimage. This option wasn’t one I was interested in. It had taken me a long time to find a CPAP machine, face mask, and headgear I could tolerate. Another machine just wouldn’t be interchangeable for me. Fortunately, I seem to be capable of sleeping without my CPAP without really noticing the difference, except for the fact that I snore badly without it.
I do use it almost every night, but I don’t have to.
My main goal, now that the machine had definitely been found, was to make sure I had it in hand before returning to the United States.
But how to get it back? My CPAP was now in the missing items office on level zero of Terminal 4 at the Madrid airport, almost 400 miles away.
When I re-checked my plane tickets heading back home at the end of the Camino, I saw that I didn’t have enough of a window between the arrival of my flight from Santiago to Madrid and the departure of my connecting flight to San Francisco to retrieve my machine. Trying to pick it up myself meant I might miss my international flight home, something I definitely didn’t want to do.
What other options did I have?
In reality, a number of my students were in Madrid already, having arrived a few days early to get over their jet lag and have some fun. Quite a few of them would be heading to the Madrid airport tomorrow to catch the short flight, as I had, to Santiago, where all of us were going to meet.
Perhaps one of them would be willing to retrieve my missing machine?
But it was a lot to ask.
It had been impossible for me to find the lost luggage department. Now, that I’d found out that it really was on the zero level of the Arrivals Hall, I realized that all the advice I’ve gotten about going downstairs had been right after all.
Whoever retrieved the bag for me had to be willing to get to the airport an hour early, get dropped off at Arrivals instead of Departures, locate the office, liberate the machine, find their way back to the Departures terminal to check in for their flight, then hand-carry my CPAP all the way to Santiago.
CPAP machines can’t be checked. They must be hand-carried. So my courier would be acquiring one more thing to carry in addition to their own belongings. On a positive note, a CPAP machine, which fits easily over a shoulder, does not count as a piece of hand luggage. Because it’s a medical device, it basically flies for “free.” But still, it would be one more thing to manage, keep track of, and contend with. And for someone who doesn’t use a CPAP machine, it could be easy to forget.
As I said, it felt like a big ask.
Most of my students, I figured, had enough to cope with tending to their own things and their own check-in process, without trying to rectify my dilemma.
But still, getting one of them to help me was probably my best option.
One of my students volunteered, but when I wrote back telling her what would actually be involved and giving her an out, she took the out, agreeing that she wasn’t the person for the job.
And then I thought of Gaia. Gaia is a friend from Santa Cruz who is joining this year’s pilgrimage. I felt better leaning on a friend for such a big favor, rather than a client I didn’t yet know. Gaia speaks three languages fluently, her Spanish is good enough to make herself understood, and she’s an extremely seasoned traveler. She’s been traveling and living internationally since she was a baby.
She is also young. If push came to shove, Gaia would be capable of running through an airport.
So I sent her a message and asked if she would be willing to go on MISSION IMPOSSIBLE for me. I explained what would be entailed and she said yes.
Tomorrow is the big day. Stay tuned.