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Erie County, Ohio, 911 dispatchers recently received a call from a woman who was worried when her grandmother didnβt come home. According to dispatcher Jordan Vanichek, authorities sent out a 'be on the lookout' alert and requested her cellphone carrier to "ping" her location. The ping gave deputies an area to search for the grandmother, but there was no sign of her anywhere.
After hours of dispatchers continuously trying to call the elderly womanβs phone, she finally answered. The woman told them sheβd been at home the whole time and sheβd been yelling for help. She said she could see her rear-view mirror and there was a big white bag in front of her and thatβs when Vanichek realized she wasnβt at home, but was actually inside her car and had been involved in a crash which deployed her carβs airbag.
Dispatchers kept the woman on the line and urged her to use Siri to call 911, which gave them her precise location. "The longest 10 seconds of our lives waiting to see if it was actually going to work and after about 10 seconds, our Rapid S.O.S. system pinged," Vanichek recalls. The woman was found in her car off the road, just yards from the Bay View police department, and was taken to a local hospital. Sheriff Paul Sigsworth later praised the dispatchers for their part in the multi-agency effort that led to the womanβs rescue.