Blind woman reunited with lost luggage

Nancy Whitman and her boyfriend Tony usually spend their days in Moberly together.

They met a year and a half ago online and recently moved to the small town. They spend their days like any typical couple but with a major difference.

They’re both blind.

Whitman has been totally blind most of her life and her boyfriend, who can see light but not faces, has been losing his sight since his early 20s.

Traveling is difficult for the couple because of their disability, but recently the two went to Kentucky to visit Whitman’s family.

But on the way back, after several bus transfers, Whitman’s luggage never made it back to the Columbia bus station they arrived at.

Whitman knew the bus had been running behind schedule but she assumed her luggage made it through.

“We never actually went into the terminal, we just went from one bus to the transfer bus,” she said. “Because they rushed us from one bus to the other, I never knew if they actually got it.”

Whitman started calling around to the terminals she visited but wasn’t having any luck located the luggage. One of her friends ended up calling the Greyhound headquarters in Dallas, but they weren’t helpful.

“She just could not get any results with the person she was talking to,” Whitman said.

Whitman’s luggage had a computer in it that had special software for the blind, so she said she needed to get her luggage back.

She said she felt like she had nowhere else to turn, so she called ABC 17 News for help.

Over the course of the past month we dealt with Greyhound and eventually the Attorney General’s office.

Joe Bindbeutel is the Chief Counsel in the Consumer Protection Division at the Attorney General’s Office. He said the office stepped in to help Whitman, especially because of her disability.

“We intervened and located the luggage, the company found the luggage,” he said. “There was a problem at the other end where where she was asked to come down and fill out some paperwork and drive 30 miles from Moberly to Columbia to do so and we didn’t that was very reasonable so again we interceded on her behalf and facilitated that being done a little bit more expeditiously.”

After we contacted them, Greyhound was able to located Whitman’s luggage in Roanoke, VA and delivered it to her home in Moberly.

Senior Communications Specialist Lanesha Gipson said Greyhound apologized for the inconvenience but tried its hardest to reunite Whitman with her luggage.

Whitman said she would warn future passengers to be more diligent with their luggage, especially when the bus is in a hurry.

“I would tell them you get off the bus stand there and wait until they actually let you see they have your luggage and not take it for granted that they have it,” Whitman said.