When faced with a misplaced or stolen wallet, a quick response is everything.

It’s a story we’ve all heard in one form or another.

“I went to my footlocker and found the wallet and some other items were missing,” says TJ Graf of Phoenix, Ariz. “The first thing I did was notify security. The first thing after that, I notified the banks via the Internet.”

“It was extremely easy,” Graf says. “I went to their website and clicked on customer service.”

Graf’s situation is probably unique because he drives in Iraq for KBR Construction, a division of Haliburton. But his rapid response to the theft of his wallet saved him from financial loss and the Federal Trade Commission’s top-ranked fraud-related complaint: identity theft. “They sent new cards Federal Express to Iraq,” he says. “I received them in seven days, which isn’t bad for a war zone.” And the thief, says Graf, was a co-worker who was “caught, fired and sent back to the states.”

But Graf was lucky. For truckers, a lost or stolen wallet is a crisis that can be expensinve and cause headaches.