Airlines lose luggage.

It comes home a day or two late, still loaded down with your soiled clothing, carefully wrapped souvenir shop trinkets, those unworn extra shoes.

Renee Massie lost her luggage June 8.

She uses the word nightmare a lot when she talks about it.

The disappearing plane. The broken promises. The ruined trip. The weeks of e-mails and phone calls to Frontier Airlines.

And still no luggage.

"They kept saying it was just like it disappeared out of thin air," the Lincoln woman said.

Then came Wednesday.

The day the nightmare took a strange -- but hopeful -- turn after a friend told her to check a breaking story online.

Police had arrested a Phoenix-area couple after the man was caught leaving Sky Harbor International Airport with a stolen bag.

In the couple's garage: a thousand suitcases.

Neighbors told the local news station they weren't surprised. They did have an awful lot of yard sales.

Renee's nightmare started in Denver.

The public health educator was on her way to a national tobacco conference in Phoenix.

She took her husband along, thought they'd turn it into a little vacation.

Neither of them had been to the desert. So Renee bought new cool clothes. Three pairs of new sandals. She packed her diamond earrings.

Ron had the Bible she gave him, embossed with his name.

On the layover in Denver, Renee and Ron were going to stay on the plane. But the flight attendants told them they had time to stretch their legs.

"When we came back the plane was gone," Renee said Wednesday.

So were their carry-ons and their checked bags.

Renee was not a happy traveler.

But the attendant promised all their bags would be with Earl, the gate agent in Phoenix. He'd meet the plane and get them personally, she said.

But Earl didn't have the checked bags.

And what about the carry on? Renee asked when she and Ron landed, finally, late and without their money, medication or a stitch of extra clothing.

On the plane, said Earl, head down.

Where's the plane?

Back in Denver.

"So that's how the nightmare started."

The plane got back to Phoenix at 2:30 a.m. Still no bags.

Renee spent her spare sightseeing time calling Frontier, going to pharmacies for blood pressure pills.

Finally, she says, the airline told her to buy new clothes.

Spend $150, we'll reimburse you. So they did. And then they bought new luggage to carry their new clothes home.

Then they got back to Omaha.

"And nobody was there to give us the money," Renee said. "They told us to come back the next day."

They did.

And then, Renee said, they told them they would only reimburse them for half the cash.

And still, no luggage.

"I e-mailed, e-mailed, e-mailed. Called, called, called, finally someone e-mails me a lost luggage claim form."

Renee has a file at home with all of her correspondence, she says.

She got a check for the luggage, finally, but the airline didn't cover the lost jewelry and it depreciated the clothing, she says, by 10 years. Ten years???

Not happy. But life without the lost luggage went on.

And then the Crime on the Baggage Carousel story broke.

And Renee called the Phoenix Police Department.

It makes sense now, she says.

"It never settled right with me. How could that luggage just disappear?"

She was watching the news Wednesday night. She heard CNN picked up the story.

And there is footage of police officers loading luggage into trailers.

"It's been a nightmare, but I'm going to push this thing."

She bets her bag is in the pile.

She hopes the sandals didn't end up at a yard sale first.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.