Originally published in 2007

Mark Moore realized something was amiss on his family’s vacation even before the trip had begun. 

Mark, his wife Lorraine and their two children had just boarded a plane bound from Washington, D.C., to Oakland, California, where Mark’s sister was to be married that weekend. As the plane taxied down the runway, Mark remembered that he and his wife had left a garment bag locked in the back of their Chevy Suburban — and that the clothes the family had planned to wear to the wedding, including their daughter’s bridesmaid gown, were inside. 

“I knew it before we even took off,” recalls Mark, “but I didn’t work up the courage to tell my wife until we were in the air.” 

Mark and Lorraine realized that employees at the hotel where they had left their car could retrieve the bag and send it to them if they could get into the Moores’ locked SUV. 

“So we called OnStar* and had them remotely unlock the vehicle,”* recalls Lorraine. The garment bag was shipped to the Moores on the next flight. 

“OnStar saved the day, saved the wedding, saved the vacation,” she says.