CHICAGO (AP) — Anna Tabakh didn’t know a word of English. At age 5, a stranger in a strange land, she was en route with her parents from the Soviet Union to a new home in Kansas City, Mo. But she understood the intent when security guards at a New York City airport suspiciously eyed her stuffed animal, a rather rotund plush toy pig.“They thought we were smuggling diamonds in my stuffed animal friend,” Tabakh, now 27, says, recalling how her mom, pleading in broken English, persuaded the guards not to tear apart the toy to search its contents.
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