It was a quiet Sunday morning when Officer Janet and her K9 partner, Max, pulled into the park’s lot for a routine walk-through.
They didn’t expect to encounter any critical situations as the day had just begun and the entire city seemed to be still asleep.
There weren’t many people around, but then, out of the blue, officer Janet and her K9 heard a boy crying.
When she looked around, she spotted a little child, no more than five years old, standing at the edge of the schoolyard gate, gripping the bars.
It wasn’t a sight she hoped to see so Janet knew the little one was in some sort of trouble even before she approached him.
“Hey, sweetie, are you okay?” she asked him.
At first, the boy refused to answer. And then, he whispered something in a voice so soft and quiet that she couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell her.
What was clear was that the boy was there all by himself, with no adult in sight.
Max, trained in search and rescue, stood alert. The truth was that he wasn’t good around children, but this time, he started circulating around the boy before he pressed his nose against the boy’s hand.
Max could sense something wasn’t right. He knew the boy was disturbed and tried to calm him down by sitting beside him and nudging his backpack with his snout.
It wasn’t long before Max started barking, as though he was trying to tell his partner to force the child to speak.
“Sweety, you can tell me what bother’s you. My pal Max and I are here to help you,” Janet said gently. The boy started crying even louder than before and said, “My mom wouldn’t wake up. I was calling her name, but she just wouldn’t wake up.”
Officer Janet begged the boy to lead her to his home, asking if he knew where he lived.
The boy nodded and started walking, with Janet and Max following him. In the meantime, she radioed for backup, reporting a possible emergency.
When the three finally got to the boy’s house, which wasn’t far, they found his mom unconscious in her bed. Luckily, she was still breathing, although barely.
Medics arrived just in time to administer aid. They said that a delay in merely minutes might have cost the woman her life.
It turned out that she had suffered a diabetic episode in her sleep.
While Janet believed the boy was lost, Max knew there was more to the story. He sensed the urgency and recognized the signs of panic that led to a life being saved that day.
