I finally got to be a hero at work, rather than the bad guy. I usually get blamed for all the bad stuff people do, but the other day I actually had a good ending to a story.
I got a call of a missing 5 year old boy. The parents said they had just moved here two weeks ago, and their 5 year old has been missing for 45 minutes. They feared that he had walked out the front door. The mother was running around the neighborhood, looking for him. I had other officers come with me to look around. I met with her, and she is frantically yelling his name and crying. (as I would have been, too) I asked her if anyone was at home and if they had checked the house well. She said that her husband was home, and they checked the house 6 times. I assured her that he was in the house, and I went to the house while everyone else looked around.
The dad was at the house, and assured me that they had stripped linens off of beds and thoroughly checked the house. I informed him that we were going to check again, and asked where he had last seen the boy. He said he was upstairs, so we began looking upstairs. He was not in the bedroom. There was a playroom full of rubbermaid containers. I asked him if he had checked each one, and the father said he had. I asked about the one in the corner that was hard to get to, and he was sure he had checked it. I told him to check again, and I began to move lids and check the ones closer to me. He moved the one in the corner around, then moved on.
I pointed back in the corner and told him to check again. The container in the corner was not only harder to get to, it had a cardboard box on it and three lids on top of that. I kept feeling something drawing me to that corner. I heard the father yelling "Ja**, OMG Ja**" but the boy was not moving. The dad was holding his daughter, so he grabbed the boy by the shirt and lifted him out. He was limp and unresponsive. His eyelids started to flutter, and he was pasty and wet. We ran him outside for some fresh air as I called for medical to respond.
Medical put a pediatric lifeflight on standby. The boy was hard to wake up and keep awake. As more time passed, he became more alert. The paramedics checked him over, and said that his oxygen stats were a little low, but improving, so they cancelled the lifeflight. They said it was good thing that we found him when we did. A little longer without oxygen and he would have had some life-altering consequences, including death.
I honestly believe that it was divine intervention that night. I am thankful that, for once, I can reminisce about a happy ending.
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5 comments:
Great story. I have to admit though, I am wondering how he got in there in the first place. Especially with a box on top of it. hmmmm
That is what my mother said, the ceiling was slanted, kinda like a under the stairs storage room. The box on top of it was a cardboard box that only had tinsel and glass ornaments in it. So, the ceiling held the stuff on top of it and he opened the lid and slid his skinny self in there. If there hadn't been a slanted ceiling to hold the stuff on the top, then it would have slid off..... Does that make sense? It is about 2AM.
I think it was divine intervention and I am glad you were tuned to it!
I liked the ending on this one...
As I told the parents as they were hugging me.... it's what I get paid those Big Bucks for!! Just doing my job, but I like it a lot better when it has a happy ending.
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