Bag handler was beacon at the airport

The baggage room at Delta Air Lines is a bit dimmer now that Anna Marie Caputo has loaded one last overstuffed suitcase onto the conveyor belt and clocked out after 24 years of hard work behind the scenes at Salt Lake City International Airport.

"It's like a light's gone out — this place will never be the same," says the baggage clerk's friend and co-worker Alison Lafazan. "Anna forged the trail for every woman out here working the ramp. It seems strange to come to work and not be greeted by her smile."

Three weeks have passed since Anna, 64, decided to accept an early retirement package from Delta after two decades of loading and unloading everything from pet turtles and potatoes to coffins and skis. Already, she is missing the strenuous routine, even though her shift required climbing out of bed at 4:30 every morning.

But it was time to cash in. Years of hoisting heavy bags and breathing jet fumes have taken their toll, even for a fit grandmother who can lift nearly twice her body weight.

"A lot of people leave this job with bad backs, bad shoulders, bad knees," says Anna, "so I know I've been lucky. I'm leaving with asthma because of all the dust and the fumes, but the rest of me's intact. For that, I am grateful."

Hoping to give Anna few minutes in the limelight after years of quiet service, Alison suggested that I join the two for a Free Lunch of blueberry and cream-cheese blintzes at Salt Lake City's Village Inn.

"She's the one we've all gone to if we need advice or somebody to talk to," says Alison. "Everybody knows Anna at the airport — she's been a fixture there. How many times do people leave a job and never get much recognition? We couldn't let that happen to Anna."

Dressed in an elegant burgundy silk blouse, perfectly pressed black slacks and matching patent leather spiked heels, Anna Caputo certainly doesn't fit the image of someone who spent hours sweating in the claustrophobic underbelly of a 737, catching bags as they roll off the belt.

She was 40 years old, a single mother of two, when she left her secretarial job to apply at Western Airlines and earn a bigger paycheck. At first, Anna stocked planes with soda cans and peanuts, then she was assigned to do "push backs" — signaling pilots when it was safe to leave the gate.

After Western was bought out by Delta, she became one of the first women to work the luggage ramp, impressing hefty co-workers by effortlessly lifting 70-pound bags that might as well have been full of anvils.