Frank Abagnale - Catch Me If You Can

“A pilot will be visiting your campus on Monday, September 9, and will be available for three days to interview stewardess applicants,” the spurious letter stated. “Under separate cover, we are sending you some brochures and employment application forms which you might wish to distribute to interested students.”

I signed the name of Pan Am’s director of personnel to the letter and placed it in a Pan Am envelope. I packaged the brochures and application forms in one of the large manila holders. Then I went to Pan Am’s office building, sought out the airline’s mail room and dropped the missives off with a young clerk, brusquely ordering they be sent air mail.

I thought Pan Am’s own postage meter, with its little Pan Am blurb, “World’s Most Experienced Airline,” would add a little class to the counterfeit mailings.

I dispatched the letter and the other material on August 18. On August 28 I called the University of Arizona and was connected with John Henderson, director of student placement.

“Mr. Henderson, this is Frank Williams, a co-pilot for Pan American World Airways,” I said. “I am scheduled to visit your campus in a couple of weeks, and I’m calling to see if you received our material and if the dates are suitable.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Williams,” enthused Henderson. “We’re looking forward to your visit and we did receive your material. In fact, we’ve posted it about campus, and you should have a goodly number of applicants.”

“Well, I don’t know what was in the letter you received,” I lied. “But I have been instructed by the flight supervisor to interview only juniors and seniors.”

“We understand that, Mr. Williams,” Henderson said. “In fact, all the inquiries I have received so far have been from juniors or seniors.” He volunteered quarters on the campus for me, but I declined, saying I’d already made reservations with a hotel favored by the company.

I appeared on the University of Arizona campus at 8 a.m., Monday, September 9, and Henderson greeted me cordially. I was, of course, in uniform. Henderson had set aside a small room for my use during my stay. “We have thirty applicants to date, and I have scheduled them to appear in lots of ten each day,” he said. “I know, of course, you’ll be talking to them individually, and you can set your own daily schedule, if you wish. But the first ten will be here at 9 a.m.”

“Well, I think I’ll talk to them as a group at first, and then interview them individually,” I said.

The first group of ten coeds was, collectively and individually, simply lovely. More than ever, looking at them, I saw the need for a crew of my own. The ten of them eyed me like I was Elvis Presley about to swing into action.

I affected a businesslike air. “First of all, ladies, I want you to know this is as new to me as it is to you. I’m more used to a cockpit than a classroom, but the company has assigned me this task and I hope I can carry it out successfully. With your help and understanding, I think I can.

“I say ‘understanding’ because I don’t have the final say as to who will be hired and who will not. My job is just to select girls who I think would be most suitable as flight attendants and to make a recommendation in their behalf The personnel director has the authority to reject any or all of the candidates I offer. However, I can also say that you might be hired on my recommendation without your having to be interviewed by anyone else.

“There is also this-it’s unlikely any of you will be hired by Pan Am before you graduate. But if you are selected as a future stewardess, it’s our policy to give you some sort of assistance during your last year in school just so you won’t be tempted to take some other job. Am I making myself clear?”

I was. The girls said so. I then dismissed them as a group and began interviewing them individually. I wasn’t really sure of the type of girl I wanted in my “crew,” but I was sure of the type I didn’t want. I didn’t want a girl who couldn’t handle it if she learned she’d been conned into an elaborate scam.

Totally naive and patently prudish candidates I crossed off immediately. Those who were personable and attractive, but superstraight (the kind of girl an airline would like as a stewardess), I marked as questionable. I put check marks after the names of girls who impressed me as easygoing, somewhat gullible, a little daring or devil-may-care, ultraliberal or not likely to panic in a crisis. I thought the girls who possessed such traits would be the best bets for my make-believe flight squad.

Henderson sat in during the morning sessions, but during the lunch break he led me to a file room behind his office and showed me an entrance near where I was interviewing the girls. He handed me a key to the door. “There’s very rarely anyone on duty here, since our student records system is completely computerized,” he said. “So you’ll need this key. Now, I’ve pulled the files of all the applicants and put them aside on this desk here, in case you want to study the record of a particular girl. This way, you can operate pretty much on your own, although we’ll be available to help you if you feel you need help, of course.”

I was intrigued with the record-keeping system and Henderson obligingly showed me how the system worked before taking me to lunch as his guest.

I finished with the first ten applicants early in the afternoon and the following morning met the second batch of candidates. I gave them the same spiel, and like the first ten, they were equally amenable to my terms. The last girls, too, were exposed to the same con, and by the afternoon of the third day I had narrowed the field to twelve candidates.

I spent a couple of hours studying the files of the twelve on an individual basis, recalling my own interviews with them and my impressions of them, before settling on eight. I was leaving the records room when I was seized with an amusing whim, one that took me less than thirty minutes to satisfy. When I left the room, Frank Abagnale, Jr., a native of Bronxville, had transcripts in the files showing him to have earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in social work.

The next morning I delivered my “thesis” to my eight finalists, since they were the lambs who had made possible my whimsical sheepskins.

The girls were excited when I assembled them, in the perfect mood for the con I put down. “Calm down, please, calm down,” I implored them. “You haven’t been hired as stewardesses. I think you ought to know that now.”

The words achieved the desired multiple shock. And momentary total silence. Then I grinned and laid it on them. “That’s because you’re all juniors and we want you to finish your education before joining Pan Am,” I said.

“I think I mentioned before that the company likes to assist approved stewardess candidates during their last year in school, and I’ve been authorized to make you eight girls an offer I think you’ll find interesting.

“I have been informed that the company intends to hire a number of girls as summer interns for the coming year, and these girls will be sent to Europe in different groups to act as advertising representatives and public relations people. That is, they’ll be used as models for photographs for Pan Am ads in various world publications-I’m sure you’ve all seen the kind I’m talking about-and some will be used as speakers at schools, civic group meetings, business seminars and that sort of thing. It’s a show-the-com-pany-flag type of tour and usually we use real stewardesses or professional models dressed up in flight-attendant uniforms.

“But this coming summer, we’re going to use girls who’ve applied for stewardess positions and it will serve as sort of a pretraining period for them. I personally think it’s a good idea for several reasons. One, it will allow our ad people to use pictures of our own personnel, depicted in cities we serve, and secondly, we won’t have to pull actual stewardesses off the flight line when a photo situation calls for an actual stewardess. That’s always made it tougher on the other stewardesses in the past, because summer months are our peak passenger months, and when we have to pull attendants off flight duty, other girls have to do their work.