Calm Cary kid saves her mom

6-year-old to be honored for 911 call

CARY -- The 911 dispatcher could only admire the matter-of-fact tone of the 6-year-old girl on the line.

Rick Thomas could hear Grace Downen's baby brother screaming in the background on Oct. 1 as she told the Cary Police Department emergency communications supervisor how her mother, Jennifer Downen, was ill and close to passing out.

Relaying Thomas' questions to Downen, Grace confirmed that Mom was having trouble breathing. Grace, a first-grader at Penny Road Elementary School, and her family had moved to Cary's Cambridge neighborhood a few months earlier, but she had no trouble providing dispatchers their home address.

It was enough help to get paramedics there in time to take Downen to Western WakeMed, where she was treated for gastroenteritis and pancreatitis. Grace's quick thinking earned her a trip this evening to Cary Town Hall for a Town Council meeting, where Police Chief Pat Bazemore is scheduled to present her the town's first "I Knew What to Do" award.

Modeled after a similar program in Raleigh, the award recognizes children under the age of 14 who call 911 with a life-threatening emergency and provide vital information to dispatchers.

"She was very calm," Thomas said of Grace. "I talk to adults all the time, and if their mother was having difficulty breathing, they would be at a 'freak' level."

The Raleigh-Wake County Emergency Communications Center has recognized two Raleigh-area children for similar actions in the last two years. The award was designed to help raise awareness about how children should be taught to provide information and take instructions from 911 dispatchers.

When Thomas asked who taught her to call 911, Grace said she learned from her mom and kindergarten, where they made pretend calls to 911 in class. "But it was not for real," she said. "The firefighters didn't come."

Grace's mother said she was grateful that her daughter remembered their new address, because she was not sure that Grace ever learned the address of their previous home in Virginia. Her husband was out of town on business, and she was home with Grace and Grace's two younger brothers when she fell violently ill and felt her arms and legs go numb.

After asking Grace to call a relative who lived nearby, Grace called 911 at her urging. Grace loved to talk on the speakerphone, Downen said, so as ill as she felt that day, Downen said she almost laughed when she heard Grace correct Thomas for presuming she was in kindergarten.

"She told him I was 'spitting up,' which is what we call it when we get sick," Downen said. "She was completely calm the whole time, no tears, no crying, until they took me out on the gurney."

After she returned home the next day, Downen said Grace was a bit clingy for a few days. That has lessened, and Grace has enjoyed sharing the story of her 911 call at school, Downen said.