ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WINCHESTER
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
HER QUICK ACTION might have been learned from her brother, her mother said. He's 7.
Kelsey Gardner doesn't know how to color-match her apparel yet. Mathematics is still a mystery to her, as it would be to most 3-year-olds.
But when her mother, Robin Gardner, tumbled down a flight of stairs at her home last week, the child was bright enough to pick up a phone and dial 911.
Robin Gardner said she was battling the flu and felt faint at times on Friday. ``I got to the top of the stairs and I started blacking out again and my knees buckled.''
She hit her head during the fall, then lay dazed at the foot of the stairs. Although Gardner doesn't remember, Kelsey said her mom told her to go to the phone and dial the emergency number, 9-1-1.
``It was like I was in a fog,'' Gardner said. For about a minute, she lay unable to move, listening to her daughter talk on the phone with an emergency-services dispatcher.
After a while, she sat up and Kelsey turned the phone over to her. It wasn't long before an ambulance screeched to a stop outside her house and carried her off to the hospital. She needed two stitches to close a cut on the top of her head.
Credit Kelsey's adroit response to training from her 7-year-old brother, Joshua, Gardner said. Whatever Joshua learns, he soon teaches his little sister, she said. Joshua, a first-grader, has learned the basics of safety in school, where children are introduced to such situations and taught what to do when they happen, said Winchester Fire Chief Lynn Miller.
But it's unusual for a child as young as Kelsey to know how to dial 9-1-1 in an emergency and to remain calm enough to carry it through.
On Monday, Miller presented the child with a certificate of achievement.
``A lot of things she does, and Joshua too, surprise me,'' said the girl's father, Steven Gardner.
LENGTH: Short : 45 linesby CNB