Away-From-Home Alone Ordeal Ends Happily For Boy

Seven-year-old Ivan Boot of Uzbekistan was watching planes land and take off at a St. Louis airport when he realized his family had just left on one without him.

“I was looking for all of you, but I didn’t find you. I started to cry,” he told his family in Russian when they were reunited Friday after 17 hours apart.

The Boots were emigrating with their eight children from Angren, Uzbekistan, to live with relatives in Sacramento.

The family left Kennedy Airport in New York on Thursday and had a 45-minute layover at Lambert Airport in St. Louis before a connecting flight to Sacramento.

The Boots weren’t able to sit together on the TWA flight, and they didn’t realize Ivan was missing until they reached Sacramento four hours later. TWA had told relatives waiting in Sacramento that the boy was left behind, and family members told the Boots when their plane landed.

TWA spokesman John McDonald said an agent in St. Louis found Ivan alone near the service center at the gate after his family’s 7 p.m. flight departed. “He was a little upset,” McDonald said.

The boy speaks no English and none of the agents spoke Russian. They found a ramp service worker whose wife speaks Russian, and she came to the airport to translate.

Ivan spent the night at a hotel. The airline put the boy on a Friday flight.

When he arrived in Sacramento, Ivan was engulfed by about 40 relatives, who showered him with flowers, fruit, candy and toys.