BEIJING: A quick-thinking Chinese girl who was lost figured out a way to get help without a mobile phone or asking a stranger in the street, earning praise on social media.
On July 30, the youngster, eight, from Quzhou, Zhejiang province in southeastern China, became separated from her grandfather on the way home from her dancing class.
Unable to contact her family, the girl grew anxious.
However, she noticed an ATM booth nearby and pressed the red button beside the machine, which connected her with the bank’s monitoring centre.
Zhou Dongying, a staff member from the Quzhou Rural Commercial Bank, answered the girl’s call through the intercom system.
“Do you have your grandpa’s phone number?”asked Zhou, but the girl did not, and neither could she recall the phone numbers of other members of her family.
Zhou alerted the police and told the girl to stay put while continuing to comfort her.
“Stay here and don’t move, the police are on their way,” Zhou assured her.
Officers from a police station of Kaihua County Public Security Bureau soon arrived and the girl was reunited with her grandfather, who had been searching for her.
According to Tide News, many local ATM stations in Hangzhou in Zhejiang province feature two types of emergency assistance buttons beside the machine – an “emergency call” button and a red “emergency alarm” button.
The bank said the emergency call button, enables people to establish direct communication with the bank’s monitoring centre.
The alarm button, on the other hand, is designed to quickly alert the police during emergencies at the ATM.
While this was the first time Zhou encountered such a situation on duty, the method has been successfully used in other cases.
For instance, in February 2021, a five-year-old boy from Hubei province in central China got separated from his mother in a supermarket and used an emergency ATM button, eventually reuniting with his family.
The online community praised the girl for her mental quickness and expressed surprise at the novel use of an ATM.
“She is so clever,” said one person.
“This is the first time I’ve learned that an ATM can be used like this. Kudos to the smart little girl and the warm-hearted staff,” another said.
“I feel like I’m not as smart as a child. I’ve learned a new emergency skill today,” a third person wrote. – South China Morning Post
