A lovely, 93 year-old great-grandmother living in San Francisco had a handful of family members to keep her company.
She looked like a 71 year-old – still very fresh, mobile and energetic.
She greatly adored her son, grandson and her 11-year-old great grandson – who was her favorite.
Everything at the grandma’s household was always normal and smooth sailing.
Until one night. The police showed up at the front door at around 11PM claiming somebody from the house had called.
It happened once. Twice. Then for four days in a row.
Everyone living in the house insisted nobody called and would hush away the cops. Some days the police would come back multiple times, other days they wouldn’t. Slowly, police started circling the neighborhood during the day to make sure everything looked normal. Neighbors started gossiping and wondering what was going on in the house and what all the police activity was for.
All family members, except for grandma, were gone to work or school all day. And nobody had any idea of the extra street company.
One day the great-grandson was home sick from school and noticed all the police activity. He was shocked that the police were showing up during the day and night.
Finally, after some investigation, the tech-savvy kid finally figured it out.
Lovely grandma got lonely every night after everybody went to bed and called her family in India. Their international dialing code is 9-1. And another 1 prior to the phone number.
After a couple slow dialing attempts, she’d finally get through… and chat the night away with her door closed, lights on and late night television blasted.
Kalah Considine, emergency communications manager for Naperville Police Department’s 9-1-1 Center
The Naperville Police Department usually gets 25 to 40 accidental calls daily.
Kalah said most accidental calls are cell phone pocket dials. Second are large corporations that require callers to dial 9 to make outside calls. International calls are third in line.
If someone knows they accidentally called 9-1-1, Kalah suggests they stay on the line.
“Explain it was accidental and we’ll confirm it by asking a couple questions,” she said. “If they’re hanging up and hear us on the line, they should just return the call and assure us that everything’s OK. It’s no problem, and it’s much easier for us to get verbal confirmation than to have to go through the steps of dispatching someone to the location.”
From January through July of 2015, the Naperville Police Department has dispatched officers 782 times for accidental 9-1-1 dials.
Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this short story, excluding interviews, are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
