Update on my fathers experience at the TSA X-ray inspection:
He walked through the metal detector three times with it beeping before they asked him to remove the watch.
He then walked through without the watch( which was now in the tray going through x-ray ) and he was waved down with the metal detector baton device.
He then proceeded to the trays which were out of the X-ray machines and grabbed his belongings. He then stayed in the area waiting for my cousin to pass through. He believes approximately five minutes went by when my cousin got through, he looked at his wrist to look at the time to see and it wasn't there. So he walked right back to the tray retrieval to ask where his watch was. They claimed they did not know and referred him to the supervisor who gave him forms to file a claim.
He asked again on the return for the watch and was given forms again.
I believe someone swiped it from the tray when it did finally come out of the X-ray machine, he was in the area the entire time though. The watch definitely wasn't in the trays when he grabbed the rest of his stuff after he was scanned with the metal detector baton , so possibly it was still being x-rayed when he grabbed the stuff from the other trays.
The watch did look nice, this is it with the plastic and everything.
I bought it for him last Father's Day and this was the first time he was going to proudly wear his water resistant watch in Mexico.
Moral of the story, keep your eye on your watch if they ask you to remove it.
