Last year 61% of our calls were for medical emergencies, where an ambulance was called immediately. Where emergency servises (ie. an ambulance) was required, we informed them of how to get acess into the home, and wherever possible, we stay on-line with the client untill the help arrives. 

However,  many times the emergency button is pressed, an ambulance is not what is required. Sometimes the person just needs a hand up from a fall, or help with a tricky situation they've got themselves into while trying to be independant.  Here are some of our more unusual experiences of helping folk who have pressed their alarm button for something other than a medical emergency:

• An 83 yr old lady activated her alarm at 6:50am one Saturday morning. We found her cast on the garage roof! She had climbed up there to cut back a neighbor’s grape vine that had hooked into the garage spouting. When she came to get down, the leg of her shorts got caught on the arm at the top of the ladder. Whichever way she moved, trying to extricate herself, she felt like she was going to fall. So she stayed put and pressed her emergency button.

• One Mothers' Day a lady decided to set the table before she went to Church, as she was having all the family over for lunch. She tossed the table cloth over the bench onto the table, where it slid across the the highly polished surface and onto the floor behind the table. She crawled underneath and retrieved the cloth. When she went to crawl out again, she couldn’t move because her foot was caught under one of the arched legs of the table. After a lot of tugging and pushing, she finally relaxed, pressed her emergency button and waited. We phoned her back and got no response, so we phoned her daughter, who sent her sons around. The boys still tease Gran about what she was ‘really’ doing under the table!

• A lady was tidying up after having visitors.  She leaned over to retrieve a cushion had fallen down behind the couch, lost her balance and got stuck with her head near the floor, and her feet kicking in mid-air. Her emergency button, which normally hangs around her neck, was now dangling under her nose. She recalled that the people at AlphaCare had often told her she could use the alarm for any kind of emergency, so she pressed it. Within a couple of minutes neighbors appeared and helped her back onto her feet.

• A gentleman woke up at 2:45am and went to the bathroom. On his way he found the passage carpet awash with warm water. He opened the hot water cupboard and heard drip, drip, drip. He got a torch and crawled in to take a look. When he tried to move out he couldn’t move. His dressing gown was snagged on a couple of screws that were sticking down below the shelf above him. He wriggled around for some time, getting more and more irritable, not to mention scratched by the screws, then he finally pressed his emergency button. Within a couple of minutes a neighbor appeared on the scene and quickly had him out of the cupboard. The neighbor found an after-hours plumber in the Yellow Pages and by 4:30am the problem was solved. The funny part about this was that his wife slept through the whole thing.

• A lady woke up in the middle of the night to an awful noise in the roof. Somewhat disorientated at that hour of the night, she pressed her emergency button thinking she had a prowler running around on the roof. We sent out the Police. When they arrived they found that the thermostat on her hot water cylinder was faulty, and in the winter air, the hot water pouring over the cold roof was causing a lot of creaking, sounding scarily like an intruder.

• A lady was looking after her grandson who was enjoying climbing all the trees in the back yard, until he fell out of one and badly gashed his thigh. Having difficulty trying to console the lad, contact the parents and stop the bleeding, she finally pressed her emergency button.  We were more than happy to send out an ambulance for the boy.