MORGAN HILL
– Engine 13 pulled up to Kelsey Hendrickson’s house a week ago
for the second time in six months. This time she was smiling.
MORGAN HILL – Engine 13 pulled up to Kelsey Hendrickson’s house a week ago for the second time in six months. This time she was smiling.
The firefighters from the Dunne/Hill station had come to present the 6-year old with a certificate of bravery, a Santa Clara County Fire Department T-shirt and a toy fire dog. And they came to praise her quick thinking that probably saved her father’s life. Kelsey called 911 at just the right time.
Capt. Roger Boone who was on duty that day said it was a close thing.
“There was a good chance that he could have died,” Boone said.
Kelsey was home alone with her father, Jack, that August day when she noticed he wasn’t responding to her the way she thought he should. She felt his arm, her mother Brenda said, and found it clammy, a sign of a diabetic in distress. Boone said Hendrickson was actually unconscious by the time firefighter/paramedics arrived at the house near Holiday Lake Estates.
Even though she was only 5 years old at the time, Kelsey did just the right thing.
She picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1. Then she stayed on the line and calmly answered the emergency services dispatcher’s questions about what was happening, who and where she was. Kelsey had a simple answer when asked how she knew what to do.
“My mom taught me,” she said.
“Not many kids this age can stay calm enough to tell the dispatcher what they need to know,” said Capt. Kevin Murphy, who brought firefighter-paramedics Bruce Law and Mark Schumate along for the presentation. Law and Schumate, along with Boone, had answered Kelsey’s call in August.
Asked if they get many 911 calls from 5-year-olds, Murphy said, “No. And it’s not just knowing to call 911,” he said, “it’s knowing what to say. Kelsey was not only calm on the phone, she was calm when the firefighters arrived at her house.”
Jack Hendrickson explained that he ran into trouble when he changed the kind of insulin he had been taking for years and had a bad reaction.
“Sometimes it takes a while to get used to the new kind,” he said.
Kelsey’s parents had not told her that the firefighters were coming on Feb. 22 so she was completely surprised but, just as she did in August, she kept her calm and accepted the plaque and her presents politely and with a smile.
Brenda Hendrickson said that, after the August scare, she made up a “911 song” and taught it to Kelsey’s Brownie Troop. Then they all visited the Dunne/Hill station and sang the 911 song for the surprised firefighters on duty.
Murphy said that Kelsey, a first-grader at Barrett Elementary School, will be invited to the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s annual recognition banquet for citizens who keep their wits about them in an emergency.
