My VIP for this week is Jordan Cooper, an unassuming waitress at Olive Garden in Paducah, Kentucky. She usually watches her niece and nephew on Sunday nights, but this particular
night she was working when a man, woman, and two children came into the restaurant.
After Cooper and her coworkers seated
the “family” they noticed something “unusual” about them. Cooper said, “I first
walked around to the baby [about one year old]. She looked at me with a face
that said help. I can’t even describe to you how bad she looked and how and why
nobody noticed it.”
An expectant mother at a nearby
table took some photos of another table and “happened” to get pictures of the
couple and the two children. Cooper slipped them her telephone number, and they
sent the photos to her as soon as they left the restaurant.
Meanwhile, the couple at the table was
getting suspicious and tried to pay their bill. Cooper followed them outside,
got their license plate number, and called 911. After she was off work and home
again, she put a picture of the little girl and the license plate number on
Facebook and asked for help in tracking down the parents.
“Her post was shared more than
14,000.” One of Cooper’s friends from childhood, Aaron Caldwell, saw the post
and started looking for information. Caldwell is a Metropolis 911 dispatcher
and got all the information to find out who the man is. He contacted the police
in Paris, Tennessee. Then he went back to digging, this time for information on
the woman.
Caldwell learned that the woman
lived in Pulaski, Illinois. He called both police departments and received a
call from the Paris Police Department about 20 minutes later. They took the
children from the home and arrested the couple “on charges of aggravated child
abuse and neglect.” The man and the woman each have a bond of $200,000 on them.
Cooper is a hero for noticing that
the child needed help and being willing to do something about it. Her friends
are assistant heroes, particularly Caldwell who went the extra mile to use his
expertise in tracking down the culprits. These heroes surely saved the children
from enduring more abuse and neglect, and they are to be commended.
No comments:
Post a Comment