| I was working radio dispatch for my local area one day, when all of a sudden, I hear a petite female voice distinctly say "Hey you! I'm stuck in here! Help get me out! Hey! HEY! HELP!!" You can imagine that I was taken aback by this... it had come over the radio, but I didn't quite know what to make of it. It obviously wasn't someone who knew they were transmitting over a radio, and I didn't have any female officers on duty at the time who could have said it. All this raced through my mind in 1/2 a second until an officer piped up on the radio just then... "Did you hear that? And what was it?" I answered him truthfully enough that I didn't know the source of the transmission! Before long, everybody was on the air speculating on the cause of the radio transmission. I conducted a quick status check "roll call" to make sure all the units were accounted for, then started asking over the radio who had heard the signal loudest and what part of the county they could hear it in. | We got it narrowed down to a general area, but couldn't pin down the exact location. There were no more mysterious transmissions, and I was wondering what to do next, when one of the officers I work with (off duty) called on the phone with the answer to the whole thing. "I was getting ready for work," he said. "and I was just grabbing my portable radio from the shelf, while my friend was showing me the new toy he bought. The toy is a tiny wooden box with an electronic sensor and recording inside. When you come near the box, the sensor activates that little voice that says "HELP! Get me out of here!" Its very funny when you know what it is, but I guess I must have pushed the transmit button on my portable (radio) and transmitted that, because I could hear you all talking about the voice after I let up on the button..." Oh, what a relief! I told everyone on the air that the mystery had been solved and there was no problem, but I didn't tell them who it was that made the fateful blunder... and I never will. :) |