A Pizza Order Might Have Saved This Woman's Life

Now it's not so farfetched to say, "Pizza saved my life." Five months ago, Reddit posted a thread asking, "911 Operators, what is that one call that you could never forget?" One dispatcher recounted his unforgettable call, in which a woman allegedly called 911 and pretended to order a pizza so her abusive boyfriend wouldn't catch on. Whether or not it actually happened, the idea is pretty damn clever. Not only could it have already saved one woman's life, the handy trick could empower other women suffering from domestic abuse to make the call.

According to Keith Weisinger, the man who contributed the story to the Reddit thread, he received the 911 call about 10 years ago. When he answered and asked where the emergency was taking place, a woman gave her address. But when he asked what was going on there, she said, "I'd like to order a pizza for delivery." At first, Weisinger thought that it was yet another prank phone call, he recalled. He continued that when he pointed out to her that she had reached 911, she responded, "Yeah, I know. Can I have a large with half pepperoni, half mushroom and peppers?"

Weisinger said that he had to ask again if she had an emergency there, and the woman said, "Yes, I do."

Now he knew something was up. Weisinger recalled that he had his moment of realization when he asked the woman, "And you can't talk about it because there's someone in the room with you?"

Weisinger said that the woman turned out to be making a domestic abuse call, but couldn't let on because her boyfriend was in the room. According to Weisinger, when the officer arrived, he found that the woman was "kind of banged up" and the boyfriend was drunk. She claimed that he had been beating her for a while. After finishing his story, Weisinger wrote, "I thought she was pretty clever to use that trick. Definitely one of the most memorable calls."

BuzzFeed was able to track Weisinger down and interviewed him about the creative call. Weisinger told the site he used his experience and intuition to guide the conversation in the right direction.

I would say 90 percent of the calls that involved an emergency situation like this were husbands or boyfriends being violent towards significant others. I bring this up because when a female caller seems distressed, experience would guide my questions differently than a distressed male caller. So when I first sensed something wrong with this caller, my first thought was a domestic disturbance.

He also said that he remembers feeling "relieved we had an officer close by who could respond quickly."

But the worst part of the whole incident? He never found out what happened to the woman after the call. He told BuzzFeed:

This is a part of the job most 911 dispatchers find frustrating. Beyond the immediate resolution — arrest, hospitalisation, etc. — we rarely hear what happens to the people who call.

Either way, now women everywhere have been given a possible way to protect themselves when they're in danger, and for Weisinger, he'll have a great story to tell for the rest of his life.

Images: H. Michael Karshis/Flickr; Reddit; Getty Images