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Five security agents were honored Thursday at Yampa Valley Regional Airport "for the deterrence of a possible catastrophic event," Transportation Security Administration Regional Security Director Ray Krebs said.

On Dec. 20, the agents found three knives taped inside a DVD/VCR player packed into the carry-on luggage of 35-year-old Roque Cesar Contreras-Garay. The Peruvian man was indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver on Jan. 6, charged with a felony for attempting to board an aircraft with concealed dangerous weapons.

"Whether or not he was going to hand off the weapons to someone else on the plane, use them himself, or bring them home like he said he was, is irrelevant," Krebs told a group of TSA agents gathered for the award presentation. "What matters is, he broke the law, and you caught him."

YVRA Director Jim Parker also commended the five agents involved in the weapon discovery.

"You don't know how important it is you do your job here," Parker said. "You're doing a great job that lets the rest of the world know that the same type of security is in the small airports as the largest ones."

Awards were presented to agents Scott Hartwig, Alisa Boyack, Darrell Abbott, Richard Nevels and YVRA Deputy Federal Security Director Robert Saltzmann.

Hartwig was operating the X-ray machine Dec. 30 and was the first to notice the suspicious bag, Hartwig said. Boyack pulled the DVD/VCR player out of the bag and noticed it had been tampered with, and realized something may have been inside. Nevels and Saltzmann were contacted to inspect the player. They discovered two razor-sharp 7.5-inch knives and a folding 4.5-inch knife taped inside it, along with some jewelry and other trinkets.

Abbott then was called to translate to Contreras-Garay in Spanish that he had broken the law and would be arrested.

People involved in the incident or who knew Contreras-Garay, including the TSA agents, Hayden Police Chief Jody Lenahan, U.S. Attorney John Suthers and Contreras-Garay's employer in Craig, said they thought Contreras-Garay had no terrorist intentions and simply made a mistake.

Lenahan said he thought the man was trying to take the knives and other items home as gifts to his family and didn't want them to be stolen while he was traveling.

A court date has not yet been announced for Contreras-Garay.

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