Palmer breast cancer survivor works to change airport security

PALMER — Breast cancer survivors have always shared a certain kinship that comes from having to fight for their lives. Now they’re fighting for their dignity.

Ever since Palmer resident Corky Champagne was forced to undergo an invasive, full-body pat down at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport Feb. 20 — the same day and place Alaska Rep. Sharon Cissna made news when she protested her own TSA screening procedure — she’s been on a mission.

“I feel this issue needs to go to the public to see what horrors the TSA is infringing on the public now that we have to travel through Seattle from Alaska,” Champagne said. “I have written to Rep. Sharon Cissna to see if we can begin a petition to stop singling out breast cancer survivors — those women who have already had their share of humiliation and groping — to help stop this segregation and prejudice.”

Like Cissna, Champagne has a mastectomy scar from her fight against breast cancer 12 years ago. And, like Cissna, the full-body scan turned her scar into a “dark anomaly,” causing TSA staff to pull her aside for additional attention.

She then was subjected to a manual exam by a gloved female agent of, mostly, her groin area without any attempt to offer a more private setting, she said.

“They take their hand and put it on your crotch in a way that borders on a cavity search. They didn’t even really check the area of concern, which was my breast,” said the owner of the high-end tour company Alaska Adventure Unlimited. “And everybody’s standing there and watching you get your pat-down and the TSA agent is talking to me as if she’s on a megaphone. My daughter was with me and watching with horror on her face.”

After researching the issues and studying other petitions online, Champagne’s petition to U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the department’s Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan was ready for mass distribution Thursday.

The six-paragraph letter asks for the suspension of the ongoing deployment of both the full-body scanner and the full body pat-down until the process is modified to exempt certain passengers.

“As a matter of pattern, practice and policy, the TSA discriminates against women that have had breast cancer, resulting in a mastectomy,” the petition states. “The policy that allows TSA agents to use ‘palm-forward’ search procedures, palm and finger probes under passenger clothing, inserting hands between underwear and skin and sliding their hands along the inner thigh until they meet ‘resistance’ of the testicle or vulva area, and around the breast is beyond invasive, beyond sexual assault and beyond acceptable.”

The issue received national media attention recently after Cissna refused to undergo the pat-down after the full-body scan revealed her mastectomy scar and she was barred from boarding her plane to Juneau. She ended up taking the ferry back to Alaska, extending her trip back to work by a couple of days.

According to Cissna’s account of the incident on her legislative website, she had vowed never to undergo another “intensive physical search” after experiencing the “horrors” of such a procedure three months earlier.

She said she repeatedly refused to undergo the “feeling-up” and would not use a transportation mode that required it.

Much of Cissna’s abhorrence of the process seems to come from her years of fighting for the rights of sexual assault victims.

“The very last thing an assault victim or molested person can deal with is yet more trauma and the groping of strangers, the hands of government ‘safety’ policy,” she wrote on her website.

A Feb. 22 Anchorage Daily News story on the incident has so far received 894 online comments, mostly in support of Cissna.

At about the same time, the Alaska State House took a stand, voting 36-2 to adopt a statement from fellow Democratic Rep. Chris Tuck that no one should have to sacrifice his or her dignity in order to travel.

Champagne, 51, hadn’t even realized Cissna had taken a stand against the pat-downs until she returned to her Valley home from her trip to visit her daughter in Seattle and saw Cissna’s story on the local news that night.

“I then got a wild hair and decided I wasn’t going to just sit back and take it,” she said. “I was so indignant.”

Champagne said she’s been doing a lot of online research about the issue and has discovered that, in addition to the general loss of privacy from the new screening procedures, some of the images from the body scans are even ending up on YouTube.

“They say they destroy the images right away, but obviously that’s not always happening,” she said.

Champagne, who flies out of state about five times a year, said she’d like to see the TSA provide an alternative for breast cancer survivors and others with scars to skip the intrusive screenings altogether.

Perhaps there could be a special medical card, wristband or some other way to identify those who aren’t comfortable with the screenings, she said.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but something needs to change,” she said Thursday after finally drafting her petition and e-mailing it to her breast cancer support group in Anchorage. “Everybody’s up in arms.”

Fellow breast cancer survivor Willie Logan of Big Lake said she’d be happy to sign Champagne’s petition.

She said that although she hasn’t run into the new airport screening procedures, she’s not looking forward to it the next time she takes a trip south.

“I think some sort of identification card would be great,” said Logan, who lost her right breast in 1991 at age 47. “Going through the scanner should be enough of an invasion.”

To contact Champagne about her petition, call her at Alaska Adventure Unlimited at 373-3494 or e-mail her info@alaskaadventureunlimited.com.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.