Answer man on border protection

For the first 25 years of his career, Ted Woo rubbed shoulders with drug smugglers. Now he faces what at times can be an even tougher crowd: the public.

Woo, New England chief of public affairs for US Customs and Border Protection, gives talks around the region on the government agency's latest antiterrorist techniques. While his job these days is to answer questions, the 50-year-old Natick resident got his start asking them. As a customs agent at Logan Airport, he regularly matched wits with drug couriers, or mules, who had been well schooled in parrying inquiries.

"Our job is to ask them questions that are totally off the wall because once we get them off track, they don't know how to get back on," Woo said.

That might mean beginning with straightforward questions like "Where are you going?" "Why are you going there?" and "How much money do you have?" -- and then throwing in a curve like "Who is your favorite music group?"

Once flustered, the suspects are more likely to reveal what they're really up to, Woo said.

Woo made Logan history in 1979 by making its first arrest of a courier smuggling drugs internally.

The suspect passed a routine search, but Woo became suspicious after hearing the man's story and discovering condoms and laxatives in his suitcase. The clincher was that the man appeared to have difficulty sitting properly. Woo obtained permission to take the suspect to a hospital for an X-ray. The cause of his discomfort: bags and bags of heroin.

Woo grew up in Boston's Chinatown section, where he saw a world divided between street gangs and peacekeepers. He attended Roxbury Latin School and then Northeastern University, where he majored in criminal justice. His began work with the US Customs Service, as the agency was then known, through the university's co-op job program. After graduation, he worked for nearly a decade as an inspector at Logan.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Woo's focus shifted from drugs to terrorism. For a while, he headed up the team that screened the containers shipped through Boston's Castle Island.

"All officers have pagers that detect radiation," said Woo. "They are so sensitive that they have actually gone off around people who have gone through chemotherapy."

Two years ago, he switched to public affairs, and now makes the rounds of schools, travel agencies, and community groups.

SUSAN CHAITYN LEBOVITS