A quick-witted Chinese girl who got lost found a way to get help without using a mobile phone or asking a stranger on the street, earning praise on social media.
On July 30, the eight-year-old daughter from Quzhou in southeastern China’s Zhejiang province was separated from her grandfather on her way home from dance class.
Since she could not contact her family, the girl became anxious.
However, she noticed an ATM nearby and pressed the red button next to the machine, which connected her to the bank’s monitoring center.
Zhou Dongying, an employee of Quzhou Rural Commercial Bank, answered the girl’s call on the intercom.
“Do you have your grandfather’s phone number?” Zhou asked, but the girl didn’t have it and couldn’t remember the phone numbers of other family members.
Zhou alerted the police and told the girl to stay there while he continued to comfort her.
“Stay here and don’t move, the police are on their way,” Zhou assured her.
Soon after, officers from a police station of the Kaihua County Public Security Bureau arrived and the girl was reunited with her grandfather, who had been looking for her.
According to Tide News, many local ATMs in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, have two types of emergency buttons next to the machine – an “emergency call” button and a red “emergency alarm” button.
The bank said the emergency button would allow people to communicate directly with the bank’s monitoring center.
The alarm button, on the other hand, is used to quickly alert the police in the event of an emergency at the ATM.
Although this was the first time Zhou had encountered such a situation in his line of duty, the method had been used successfully in other cases.
In February 2021, for example, a five-year-old boy from central China’s Hubei province was separated from his mother in a supermarket and pressed an emergency button on an ATM to eventually be reunited with his family.
The online community praised the girl for her mental quickness and was surprised by her novel use of an ATM.
“She is so smart,” one person said.
“This is the first time I’ve heard of an ATM being able to be used like this. Kudos to the clever little girl and the warm-hearted staff,” said another.
“I feel like I’m not as smart as a kid. I learned a new emergency skill today,” wrote a third person.
