I had just started work this morning and my cell phone was in my t-shirt pocket. It started to buzz and I didn't recognize the number. As I was expecting to get a customer call on my work phone any second (I work in a call center) I answered it tersely. A woman introduces herself (I don't recognize the voice) and asks if I have a moment. I said, "I'm at work", making it clear with my tone I didn't have a whole lot of time. I'm thinking this has got to be a sales call of some kind. She then explains she was calling to thank me for calling 911 a month ago.
WTF, thinks I, how did you get my cell phone number? I had called 911 because I was sitting on the front patio having a drink just before dark and there was an enormous BANG from down the street (but obscured to my sight) that sounded like a light bulb exploding. I didn't know what had made the noise but I sure as hell knew it wasn't good. A few seconds later I heard a woman cry out, more of a yelp of surprise than anything. I went inside, grabbed the phone and called 911.
I explained I'd heard this noise and the cry afterward. Within five minutes I saw the reflection of flashing emergency lights down the street. They were there for a while so I was glad I hadn't bothered 911 for nothing. The following morning I drove past the area out of curiosity and there was a Bobcat looking like it had the roll cage half torn off in the front yard of one house. I get to work, tell my boss about it and he speculates it had fallen off the back of a flatbed truck. Sounded pretty plausible to me. I thought nothing more of it until this phone call.
Long story short is this lady was calling to thank me for having called 911 because her daughter had been in an accident. It wasn't clear from her description what exactly had happened, but the daughter had been seriously injured in some sort of accident involving a car and, unable to walk, had dragged herself to two different houses but she couldn't get anyone to answer the door for help. The mother was crediting me for her daughter having received desperately-needed medical attention where none would have come otherwise.
I, of course, felt like a complete creep for having been rude to her in my tone on the phone and worse for not having left the house to go check on the situation at the time. The daughter is okay save for scars. The car was totaled as (if I understood correctly) she'd rear-ended a parked trailer carrying a piece of heavy construction equipment. The woman described it as an auger, but it might have been attached to the Bobcat. The trailer apparently won that fight decisively. We talked for a few minutes and I apologized for not having done more, etc. but she wouldn't hear of it--just kept thanking me for having called so her daughter hadn't been left alone in a snow bank.
I guess the lessons are to not be a shiny happy person to someone on the phone if you don't know who it is and to follow up when you think something bad just happened. I shudder to think what might have happened had I ignored it at the time...
