We went to Walmart today with family
the youngest member of our family is 3 years old and he ventured into the toy isle... on his own.
Weve been talking about putting him in track or soccer (if he decides he wants to) because he is notorious for being an unusually fast runner for his age
Naturally, he got quite lost venturing far from the toy isle.
It was was a total of maybe three seconds that we were turned around, before I said “where’s max?”
And I immediately before I could even finish uttering those words was running to the other end of the store as fast as I could.
I told my mom “go the opposite way” because initially she followed me, and my sister went perpendicular to us.
To every nearby stranger I made it very clear there was a missing child just quickly saying “small boy blonde hair?”
Over and over again.
The more ore times I had to say it the more real it became he was gone.
After covering all the isles of the back of the store and screaming his name- several strangers had joined in and were scattering looking for him with equal worry on his face.
I ran straight for the doors assuminf at this point he was kidnapped
because logistically a child with those tiny legs can’t book it from the back of a warehouse sized Walmart to the front in that amount of time. He was outside the radius of possibility to be found and so at this point I was certain someone got him and was headed straight for the doors.
My family members and strangers and staff were all frenzied and chaos, and no one was covering ground in a strategic manner.
But because of my time working in a hospital ER we’ve been trained to handle certain things, we code them, and one of those codes is for missing child, known as a code pink.
All doors are locked immediately when someone notifies other staff of a code pink.
You would think it sounds insane but about once a year on estimate someone tries to steal a new born baby directly from the nursery, and runs straight for the doors.
So my previous training kicked in and I was like screaming “small boy blonde hair look in the parking lot!! Look in the parking lot!”
And I went for the closest parked cars first assuming, a kidnapper would park close to hide the child quickly.
And then I went to the side of the building and I found him alone by a discreet exit where carts come in and out and he was running towards the entrance of the store, like someone had let him lose and he was screaming “mom!!” And crying really hard.
My sister later noted that she saw an employee swiftly going through the toy isle with a large empty cart, the one used for moving heavy furniture and bicycles, a young male.
She beliebes this may have been the culprit for who took him so far so fast. Using the cart and the employee exits, it really isn’t hard to snatch a child who’s wandered from the pack.
But luckily the man must of let him go at the point eh got to the parking lot and already saw people running and screaming his name, myself included, and realized he would of been caught.
