You’re in a race. You see someone in distress. You can’t tell if it’s big problem or a little one. You can’t immediately get in touch with a race organizer or anyone in charge. What do you do? You call 911!
Sally and I wasted so much time and effort before we figured this out, although it seems SO obvious now that we are out of the scene.
We were running in a casual race at a casual pace, so nothing dramatic was going on around us. A young woman took to the side of the road, clearly out of it. We stopped to try to help, eventually drawing a small crowd of equally clueless people. We all did lots of stuff that didn’t help: Sally RAN back to a water stop – the people there were volunteers with no contact with the race organizers and they brought water, which was or wasn’t a good idea. One woman said “Is anyone a nurse?” and another woman trying to help said “I am but that doesn’t mean that I know what she needs!” Eventually, precious minutes later, we said “Dial 911” and someone did.
What were we waiting for? We all had phones. There was an ambulance at the finish line for just this kind of thing – ready for our call. Why were we trying to figure out how to reach them? So what if we are calling a generic call center in town, miles away. They know how to reach the ambulance on site!
I don’t know how this turned out. I just know that an ambulance showed up immediately and we learned an important lesson.
Jane's Lessons Learned 
Jane, thanks for sharing this wake-up call story. A valuable reminder, and I can use all reminders!
Jane – excellent blog. My kids and I were just having a conversation about bystander responsibilities (initiated by a conversation my daughter had in class about the role of the bystanders during Nazi Germany) to which we migrated our conversation from that distressing period of time to what does one do “today” as a bystander to a children getting bullied, etc. You took a great first step – you crossed the road to get involved! Kudos to you and Sally. Well done. Know I Have another story to share with my kids.