Airport screeners distrust ID photos, reject cancer patient

ORLANDO - Airport security screeners refused to let a cancer patient board a flight home to Denver because they said she didn't resemble her identification photos.

Athena LaPera, 35, finally flew out of Orlando International Airport on a Frontier Airlines flight Wednesday night, two days after she was turned away by private security screeners.

The paralegal for a Denver law firm said she has lost weight and hair because of chemotherapy treatments since the photos were taken for her U.S. passport and Colorado driver's license.

Frontier desk and ticket clerks tried to intercede, but the flight left before they could get her on the plane. She was returning home from vacationing in St. Augustine with her 15-year-old son.

"I feel very degraded and angry," said LaPera, a mother of two whose husband works for Frontier Airlines.

During a telephone conversation with a federal Transportation Security Administration employee in Washington Tuesday, she said, she was told she needed new photos and a doctor's note to explain her changed appearance.

"I asked the lady, "So what happens if someone goes on Weight Watchers?' " said LaPera, who weighs 78 pounds and stands 4 feet 11.

TSA and Frontier Airlines blamed private security guards for bumping LaPera.

Spokeswoman Lauren Stover said TSA screeners check only for prohibited objects; they never check travelers' boarding passes or identification.

Stover acknowledged that a TSA employee in Washington may have suggested LaPera get a new photograph.

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