Gosh, that sucks. It reminds me a little bit of our return trip from China after we adopted our little girl.
When we received her, she was brought to us in the city of Nanning from the relatively remote city of Yulin, where her orphanage was located. In the two months prior to receiving her, she was taken from the orphanage and placed with a foster family. That family put together some gifts for us, to be given to us upon receiving her. Among those gifts was a little felt bag with a drawstring, filled with soil from her home province.
Along with the gifts we received from the foster family, we had purchased a few pieces of handmade Chinese jewelry, to be given to our daughter on special occasions; for her 16th birthday, her wedding day, etc.
That soil and all our possessions traveled with us from Nanning, to Guangzhou, to Hong Kong, to Chicago. On the connector from sh*tcago to Minneapolis, two of our bags were "lost".
The airline returned them to us the next evening. But they were pilfered by airport employees. We had traveled with little of any monetary value. But the sentimental value of the pearls - and particularly the little bag of soil - was incalculable. The pearls were gone. And apparently the thieves thought the felt bag might contain something of value, because they opened it and dumped it out all over the inside of the suitcase. We were unable to collect more than dust, so we let it go. My wife was in tears, and our hope of giving our daughter some little shred of her origin was turned to dust.
Thieves are among the lowest, most disgusting of all human beings. They reach into your life and family, and rape you.